Snake-Eater
❤️❤️❤️
I want to start this post by saying that I love T. Kingfisher as an author. She has been on my insta-buy list of authors for years and what I thought about this book will not change that.
I did like this book, but I just couldn’t get myself to love it.
The story centers around Selena and her dog Copper who have fled their city life in the hopes that her aunt in the desert town of Quartz Creek would take them in.
It isn’t immediately clear why she has run away from her old life, but it isn’t too hard to pick up on the fact that she is running from someone. Selena talks about how she can’t turn on her phone because of a location tracker app that had been installed and she doesn’t want to deal with the questions.
Selena’s plan is half-baked from the start. She hasn’t had any contact with this aunt for ten years and all she has to go on is a faded letter with an address. So, it isn’t too surprising when she turns up at the post office of Quartz Creek to get directions and learns her aunt died a year ago.
This obviously throws a wrench in her plans, but the mayor, who also works at the post office, assured her that she could stay in the aunt’s old house until she gets back on her feet. The house had stood abandoned for all that time. Apparently, Quartz Creek isn’t the place to be.
The story moves along as Selena battles with the decision to stay or not as she befriends that townspeople. This isn’t the only thing she’s battling though. Weird things start happening around her new house and in her dreams.
A local god has taken an interest in her.
I’ll be honest, as I was reading, I cared a lot more about Selena’s relationship to the townspeople and her past than about the looming mystery of the roadrunner god and her aunt.
I wanted to see how Selena dealt with her anxiety and self-hate as she met all these wonderful people. I got a little bit of that, but it unfortunately got overshadowed by the danger Selena found herself in.
I also found that the way Selena’s social anxiety and thoughts were conveyed didn’t feel the most accurate. This could just be a me problem because not everyone is going to have the same experiences, but I just couldn’t feel immersed in the story whenever Selena thought about how she was messing stuff up.
The ending was lackluster for me as well. It was all very abrupt, and I felt that the big encounter at the end needed more time to breathe. There was all this build-up and then it just sort of fell flat.
My favorite part was getting to know all the townspeople like Selena’s eccentric neighbor and the mysterious yet kind priest. Both these characters were a huge draw for me.
In the end, Snake-Eater is still a good book, it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be and that’s ok. Like I said I still love T. Kingfisher as an author, I think I just prefer her other horror books over this cozy horror one.
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