My Throat an Open Grave – Tori Bovalino

5 beautiful stars

Have you ever read a book and felt the story so viscerally in your soul that you cried as you turned the last page? Meet that book for me.

My Throat an Open Grave is the story of Leah Jones, a small, very religious/superstitious community, and the Lord of the Wood who steals babies from the inattentive. Leah’s baby brother is taken while she’s watching him, and she’s made to enter the domain of the Lord of the Wood to atone for her mistake and beg for her brother back. The Lord of the Wood grants her request with a bargain, and this bargain will unearth secrets that many in Winston, Pennsylvania will do anything to keep buried.

Leah and the other girls in Winston are taught from a young age to be pure and chaste above all else, to do nothing that would ruin them or cause rumours to spread about them, or the Lord of the Wood will take them away and punish them. The community is fiercely devoted, almost obsessively so, to this image and will browbeat, threaten, and do away with anyone problematic enough to tarnish that golden image.

This one HURTS. The farther along I read and the more I understood the true depths that this community was willing to sink to, I felt my heart breaking for Leah and all the girls who came before her. Tori has crafted this deeply poignant tale of being human, making mistakes, and discovering who we truly are at our heart. She’s given readers a cast of characters who are flawed and real and raw in a way that almost makes me feel like I can reach out and touch them.

My Throat an Open Grave will stick with me for a very long time.  This was my first Tori Bovalino book, but I can promise you it won’t be the last.