‘To Break a Covenant’ by Alison Ames: Blog Tour Review of An Amazingly Chilling Debut YA Horror

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames Blog Tour hosted by TBR And Beyond Tours. Check out my post and feel free to drop by everyone else’s tour stops!

• Title: To Break a Covenant
• Author: Alison Ames
• Publisher: Page Street Kids
• Pub. date: 21 September 2021
• Series: standalone
• Page count: 320
• Source: TBR and Beyond Tours
• Genres: young adult, horror

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Debut voice Alison Ames delivers with a chilling, feminist thriller, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls and Sawkill Girls.

Moon Basin has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember. It started when an explosion in the mine killed sixteen people. The disaster made it impossible to live in town, with underground fires spewing ash into the sky. But life in New Basin is just as fraught. The ex-mining town relies on its haunted reputation to bring in tourists, but there’s more truth to the rumors than most are willing to admit, and the mine still has a hold on everyone who lives there.

Clem and Nina form a perfect loop—best friends forever, and perhaps something more. Their circle opens up for a strange girl named Lisey with a knack for training crows, and Piper, whose father is fascinated with the mine in a way that’s anything but ordinary. The people of New Basin start experiencing strange phenomena—sleepwalking, night terrors, voices that only they can hear. And no matter how many vans of ghost hunters roll through, nobody can get to the bottom of what’s really going on. Which is why the girls decide to enter the mine themselves.

Content warning: Gore! lots of gore/blood (human and animal), body horror (human and animal), claustrophobia, hallucinations/nightmares, death, animal death, parent death (mentioned), parental conflict (being afraid of a parent), mention of alcohol/drinking, mention of self-harm, mention of divorce, mental illness (perceived/actual), mention of child death/killing, mention of suicide, drowning, paranormal activity

The first thing that caught my eye about To Break a Covenant was the sapphic romance that I saw early reviewers talking about. YA horror and a sapphic romance to boot? How can I say no to that combo? You don’t usually see me reviewing horror on this blog because I frankly am too chicken to read much of the genre. But this book and its blurb just compelled me to sign up for this tour somehow and oh boy! I am glad I did!

The story is set in Moon Basin, a mining town that is famous for its supernatural happenings since the mine blew up in an explosion, taking all the miners inside with it. Technically, everyone moved to the borders of Old Moon Basin since the explosion because there is ash raining down and a whole host of weird stuff happening in the abandoned town, so the protagonists live in New Moon Basin. No one has entered the mine since then and come out the same, and now no one literally ever goes in.

Clem is our main protagonist, who lives right next to whip-smart Nina. They have been best friends since they met in the cemetery on the day they buried Clem’s father. A few years later they met Lisey, who seems to have a sixth sense and a budding friendship with crows, and took her under their wing, making them an inseparable trio.

Piper moves into town when Moon Basin recruits her dad, Charles, to check the possibility of the mine collapsing. By chance, Piper meets the girls and they all hit it off, spending their days together and being literally the sweetest bunch of girlfriends ever! But then Piper’s dad offers to take them down to see the mines one day and they come out shaken. Things start happening; strange, creepy things with no sane explanations that start happening all over town. Soon the girls start to suspect that something is wrong and decide it’s up to them to investigate.

The four girls, Clem, Nina, Lisey and Piper, absolutely stole my heart! They were such innocent girls trying to live their normal lives in the town that is anything but normal, and it is hard not to want to protect them from everything that keeps happening to them. I was also glad to see that each of the four girls had their own distinct personalities though they spent most of their time together throughout the story.

Besides the protagonist and her three friends, the story really did not focus on the secondary characters. Though it seemed odd at first this really gave me the feeling that these four girls were truly on their own and had to get by on their own wits. Just more reason for me to love them and root for them really.

I loved how the author conveyed the chilling, unsettling vibes of the story through her writing. I was constantly on edge while reading even during the first few pages of the book! The atmospheric writing really nailed the overall chilling mood of this story, and I would go so far as to say it is one of the book’s strongest aspects too!

One of the most disquieting aspects of the story was the mixed media format the author chose to go with. The book is scattered throughout with scripts of deleted or unused footage of ghost hunters and paranormal sleuths who have come snooping around Moon Basin. I was dreading these snippets honestly because I found them super creepy!

Surprisingly, I did not find the plot that complicated. I could pretty much guess what was going on based on the current events going on in the story as well as the deleted or unused footage scripts that were scattered throughout the book.

However, this did not take away from the strengths of the story for me. I guess it could be because of the constant wariness that kept me fearing for the girls’ safety. I really liked the pace of the story as well, it was very measured and ominous but without major plot twists for me. I never thought the absence of plot twists would appeal to me but in this case, it really did!

I also feel like I should say that the romance in the book was soft and budding. Clem is a lesbian and Nina is bisexual, if I am not mistaken, and the romance was honestly very slow, but I felt that kept it real because focusing on a relationship in the middle of everything else these girls go through would be just plain weird.

Moon Basin and its history and myths were absolutely terrifying. I have always been afraid of any show that is about ghost hunting or anything faintly supernatural, so Moon Basin with its utter definition of a ghost hunter’s dream town is a scary concept for me.

But the author did a great job at bringing this cursed town to life and the ordeals its people have lived through up to this point. I ended up Googling to check if there was actually a real place called Moon Basin because the possibility of there being a place with such a horrifying history scared me. So, I think it’s safe to say that this small town horror really nailed it!

Reading To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames took me into a terrifying world of small town horrors and four young girls trying to survive the odds stacked against them in this debut novel. The chilling writing and the terrifying world-building surprised me with its excellence since this is the author’s debut, and now I can’t wait to read more of what Alison Ames has in store for us!

Alison Ames is a writer based in Colorado. Her debut novel To Break A Covenant will be published in fall 2021.

Have you read To Break a Covenant or will you be picking it up? Check out the rest of the stops in the tour here.