The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young
The Unmaking of June Farrow
by Adrienne Young
Magical Realism | Fantasy | Science Fiction
320 Pages
Released October 2023
Rating: ★★ 1/2
Goodreads
Content Warnings
The premise drew me in but unfortunately this book was a pretty big miss for me. I’ve never read anything by Adrienne Young before so we’re off to a rocky start.
As you might already suspect from the title, this book follows June Farrow who is determined to be the last Farrow woman in her family. This is because the Farrow women are cursed - doomed to succumb to madness at one point in their life. Her grandmother has just passed away and her mother mysteriously vanished when she was just a baby. The thing is, June has already started to experience hallucinations, including a red door that appears to her at random times. June has thus far fought to ignore these hallucinations but after she receives a mysterious letter, she realizes they may be more real than she previously realized.
Let’s start with the good. The writing is fine and the book was a quick read. I enjoyed the small-town-in-the-mountains atmosphere and the Flower Farm. Unfortunately, that’s where it ends. The plot was a tad confusing to follow but what really bothered me most was the weird way June’s relationships were handled. All of her relationships felt very surface-level. There’s also a poorly-contrived love triangle (but not really) that quickly turns into this weird take on insta-love (but not really??). Honestly I’m having a hard time explaining without spoiling too much but basically what it came down to, for me, was that June’s relationships with the people around her wasn’t believable at all. I wasn’t invested. You know that whole “good writers show, they don’t tell?” Yeah, this book did a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. It also felt very rushed. This is one of the few times where I wish the story was longer in order to allow the characters to develop and grow.
Overall, it started off strong but quickly fizzled out for me. That said, if you’re good with mediocre character development and you enjoy a pretty quick read with a little bit of romance, family, and magic sprinkled in, you may want to give this a try.