ARC Review: Welcome To Sortilege Falls!

*I received a digital ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

About the book:

Title: Welcome To Sortilege Falls

Author: Libby Heily

Genre & Age Group: Dystopian, fantasy, mystery, young adult

Goodreads Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Grape Merriweather has just moved to Sortilege Falls and already she knows something isn’t right. A small pack of teenage models, too beautiful for words, holds the town in their sway. The models have no plans on making Grape’s life easy. But no matter how cruel they are to Grape and the other “Normals”, no one can stay angry with them for long.

Grape’s life changes for the better, or so she thinks, when Mandy, the only “nice” model, befriends her. But that’s when the trouble truly begins. Mandy’s friendship places Grape smack in the middle of a medical mystery that has the entire town on edge. One by one, the models fall ill from an incurable disease. Grape quickly realizes that the models’ parents are hiding a secret, even as they watch their children die. To save her only friend, Grape will have to find the truth–and that means putting her life in danger.

Source: Thanks so much to Fire and Ice YA Publishing for providing me with an e-ARC via Netgalley!

How I Found Out About It: Netgalley

Review: What an interesting and captivating read, I really enjoyed the characters and the plot! This book is about a girl named Grape Merriweather (yes, that’s her real name!) whose family moves to a new community called Sortilege Falls. She encounters a group of gorgeous people labeled the Models, since, hence the name, they had experience in modelling and/or acting. They aren’t just any normal models, though! All of a sudden, one model dies of an unknown cause, and then a couple other models follow suit and also get sick, unfortunately one of them including Grape’s celebrity crush, Lance Irving. People knew that a model had caught the disease if they were clutching their stomach in pain, which led to fainting and thus being taken to the emergency room. Even though Grape only really was able to bond with one of the models, Mandy, she and her brother, Brad, were still determined to uncover the mystery of what was causing this illness, and why it only affected the models!  By the end of the story, Grape and Brad knew that knowing this information was worth it, because eventually they had to help save Mandy! This story starts off like a nice contemporary read because of Grape’s move and trying to fit in and get adjusted to the change, but it turns into dystopia/fantasy once the first model gets sick! I felt like I could really sympathize for Grape when she experienced all of those losses over the course of the book. Losing one loved one is hard, but losing a whole bunch at relatively the same time is just another story in itself. Nevertheless, I found that Grape was really strong and coped with everything so well, and didn’t let all that stress and grief get under her plate. Mandy was also just so sweet (well, for the most part) and lent Grape a shoulder to cry on while they both grieved for their lost friends together. The mystery revolving the situation kept me hooked, as I was so curious to know how the illness struck! I would recommend this book to any teen reader looking for a book boasting a little bit of everything: fantasy, dystopia, mystery, high school problems, three-dimensional characters… it’s all here, and ready for you to read on May 31st!

Rating: 4/5 Stars!

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