Lies on the Serpent's Tongue
Kate Pearsall Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers / PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group Pub Date: Jan. 7th, 2025 Genre: YA Fantasy Synopsis: In this haunting companion to Bittersweet in the Hollow, a girl who can smell the lies of others uncovers the incendiary mysteries of her small Appalachian town. Everybody lies. And in knowing their lies, I become the keeper of their secrets. As Caball Hollow slowly recovers from a tumultuous summer, the James family must also come to terms with their own newly revealed secrets. 18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths—that’s what happens when you can smell lies on the teller’s breath—and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long struggled with her gift, which has taught her that everyone distorts the truth, and no one is who they seem to be. So when her old rival Hadrian Fitch shows up on her front porch—bloodied and bruised and asking for the kind of help only she can provide—her first instinct is distrust. Except Hadrian’s attack isn’t the only strange occurrence. Now small items are disappearing, but rather than report the losses the owners act as if their missing things never existed. Rumors of a new monster prowling the Hollow begin to swirl. But how can Rowan smoke out the culprit in a town full of secrets? And worse, how can Rowan trust beautiful, solemn Hadrian when every other word he speaks has the distinct burnt smell of a lie?
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'Lies on the Serpent's Tongue' by Kate Pearsall is billed as a companion title to 'Bittersweet in the Hollow.'
Though I had the latter on my TBR list, I never quite got around to checking it out, but the set-up for book two sounded even more interesting to me. Unfortunately, 'bittersweet' is a good choice of words for my feelings on this story. The tale has plenty of great concepts and interesting possibilities, but they're just not executed that well. Pearsall has a tendency to sort of just cough up those pieces in what appears to be some random location, though we all know that's not the case, and often with little or no development. To be honest, I found the writing to be a bit unpolished. While the author is capable of lovely lines.. her elegant sentences cannot make up for the fact she doesn't seem to have a solid understanding of how to tie them together. The result is sort of a jittery mess, sort of like someone's second or third attempt at dancing if they had only ever seen what it looked like beforehand. Character development is also weak and with that.. insubstantial connections between those characters that are clearly supposed to have deep bonds and shared purpose. From familial attachments to love interests, it's all very bland. Time spent dwelling on overly detailed magical concoctions only makes that all worse. While I love to be able to visualize scenes as much as anyone, there's a point where too much focus is being wasted on them.. and that was the case here. I really think I could have enjoyed this story with a lot more fine-tuning. I certainly could have liked the main character much more and fallen for Hadrian, they just didn't get the development they deserved. Hopefully, when Pearsall gets a few more books behind her, a lot of those things will smooth out.. because I do see potential in her.
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