Sloe by Marc Ruvalo

3/5 stars

Sloe follows Ronnie, a grieving mother who gets news that her brother has died under suspicious circumstances. When she goes home to take care of his affairs, the malicious voice in her head gets stronger than ever. Ronnie must find the voice’s daughter before everything she loves is taken from her forever.

Marc created an atmospheric, tense novella with a supernatural twist. I enjoyed the historical aspects that were included, I thought it helped to bring another layer of depth to the story. There were a few parts that I flew through because I needed to see what was going to happen, which really speaks to Marc’s ability to captivate the audience!

There was some sort of sub-plot going on with Lilac and Carlos, but I never really got an understanding of why they were doing what they did. The story also finished without things being resolved with Ronnie. Did the plan work? Was there more that needed to be done? Were the spirits finally at peace? I have a lot of questions and not many answers. The ending was so abrupt that I found myself left wanting when I was finished reading.

The formatting did confuse me a little as well. It wasn’t always clear what was being said by the voice in Ronnie’s head. The transition between past and present was also not as clear as I felt it could’ve been. Sometimes, I had to read the beginning of the next section a couple times to figure out which timeline I was in.

Overall, Sloe was really interesting! I was invested in the story and figuring out what was going on. I’d just like a little more at the end to wrap things up and fully round out the book.