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Idle Grounds
On a New England morning in the late 1980s, a group of young cousins wander deep into the woods on their family’s property, drawn in by uncanny visions and the disappearance of one of their own—but the farther they go, the stranger their surroundings become.
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves—to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve.
Disquieting and delightful, Idle Grounds is a rich exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home—only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves—to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve.
Disquieting and delightful, Idle Grounds is a rich exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home—only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.
207 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 11, 2025
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19808 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews
May 8, 2025
i've said it before and i'll say it again: there is nothing scarier than the woods.
this was a very interesting book — a group of privileged cousins in the 1980s chase one of their number into the woods, encountering grisly scenes and dark mysterious kinda-magic and reflections on class along the way — that was also very frustrating, because it danced around the truly interesting things.
it's only 200 pages long, and it's intended to be a little vague and make you do the work, but it did feel to me like it overcorrected. i had fun reading this, and found it had many striking intelligent lines, but i also wanted more from it: fuller characters, fewer "what the hell does that mean" moments, a clearer intent.
still, it was cool.
bottom line: i understand why this has a 3.31 but also i don't.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the arc)
this was a very interesting book — a group of privileged cousins in the 1980s chase one of their number into the woods, encountering grisly scenes and dark mysterious kinda-magic and reflections on class along the way — that was also very frustrating, because it danced around the truly interesting things.
it's only 200 pages long, and it's intended to be a little vague and make you do the work, but it did feel to me like it overcorrected. i had fun reading this, and found it had many striking intelligent lines, but i also wanted more from it: fuller characters, fewer "what the hell does that mean" moments, a clearer intent.
still, it was cool.
bottom line: i understand why this has a 3.31 but also i don't.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the arc)
December 20, 2024
A slippery, fever-dream of a novel. Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, it's an absolute one-off. I loved it.
Written mostly in the first person plural, a group of young cousins gather with their parents for a birthday party at Aunt Frankie's house in upstate New York. They see something from a bathroom window moving from the treeline to a shed: '...we just knew it was the same thing over and over, which was worse, somehow, even though it should have been better that there was only just one.' Abi, only three goes charging outside, and the others go in search of her. It gets darker and weirder as the children encounter many unexplainable things in the woods. These sections are interspersed with 'Intermezzos' giving some of the history of the family and Beezy the matriarch and how she died. There is creepiness, and surprise, and craziness, all of it brilliantly written. At the end there is some kind of resolution but just enough to leave me thoroughly unsettled. Highly recommended. It will be published in the UK in April 2025. Pre-order it and thank me later. (Thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for the proof.)
Written mostly in the first person plural, a group of young cousins gather with their parents for a birthday party at Aunt Frankie's house in upstate New York. They see something from a bathroom window moving from the treeline to a shed: '...we just knew it was the same thing over and over, which was worse, somehow, even though it should have been better that there was only just one.' Abi, only three goes charging outside, and the others go in search of her. It gets darker and weirder as the children encounter many unexplainable things in the woods. These sections are interspersed with 'Intermezzos' giving some of the history of the family and Beezy the matriarch and how she died. There is creepiness, and surprise, and craziness, all of it brilliantly written. At the end there is some kind of resolution but just enough to leave me thoroughly unsettled. Highly recommended. It will be published in the UK in April 2025. Pre-order it and thank me later. (Thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for the proof.)
May 1, 2025
Krystelle Bamford’s eccentric novel grew out of one of her prose poems, in part harking back to her own childhood in Massachusetts. It’s an inventive, unsettling variation on a family saga, that’s mostly confined to the events of a single afternoon. A large, New England family gathers together at a house close to the one where they grew up. As the adults bicker and wrangle over events from their collective past, their children are left to their own devices. But first one, then another disappears into the nearby forest. An eerie, liminal space that suggests the possibility of some unnamed, cosmic evil – although this slightly gothic strand is by no means the dominant. Unable to attract the grown-ups’ attention, the remaining cousins venture in search of their lost. Their adventures, which read like a bizarre variation on a vintage children’s story, are interrupted by a series of intermezzos recounting the traumatic family history that looms over them and their parents. There’s an impression of a family fallen from grace, lost wealth, blighted expectations, which the children sense but can’t fully comprehend, although they clearly fear becoming their parents.
It's a difficult book to represent, sometimes it has a distinct Salinger vibe but Salinger crossed with a dense, speeded-up version of a Nancy Mitford saga. Sometimes it reminded me of a Wes Anderson movie - fortunately not so much I couldn’t get caught up in it, I’m not an Anderson fan - that odd blend of the surreal and the whimsical. The forest has an atmosphere of foreboding tinged with a slightly magical quality that leads the children to good things – a stash of free chocolate – but culminates in tragedy. And it’s soon obvious the forest is a metaphor – as fictional forests so frequently are – taking the children on a journey that involves loss of innocence, and a realisation of the precariousness of human and/or family ties. I liked the flashes of wry humour, the sudden digressions into descriptions of films or moments in history. And I appreciated the distinctiveness of Bamford’s approach to narrative, her precision, the interesting shifts between first person narrator and a kind of Greek chorus. But her style could also be a little too mannered for my taste.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hutchinson Heinemann for an ARC
Rating: 3/3.5
It's a difficult book to represent, sometimes it has a distinct Salinger vibe but Salinger crossed with a dense, speeded-up version of a Nancy Mitford saga. Sometimes it reminded me of a Wes Anderson movie - fortunately not so much I couldn’t get caught up in it, I’m not an Anderson fan - that odd blend of the surreal and the whimsical. The forest has an atmosphere of foreboding tinged with a slightly magical quality that leads the children to good things – a stash of free chocolate – but culminates in tragedy. And it’s soon obvious the forest is a metaphor – as fictional forests so frequently are – taking the children on a journey that involves loss of innocence, and a realisation of the precariousness of human and/or family ties. I liked the flashes of wry humour, the sudden digressions into descriptions of films or moments in history. And I appreciated the distinctiveness of Bamford’s approach to narrative, her precision, the interesting shifts between first person narrator and a kind of Greek chorus. But her style could also be a little too mannered for my taste.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hutchinson Heinemann for an ARC
Rating: 3/3.5
January 16, 2025
It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on physical violence against a child, bigotry, intergenerational trauma, & others.
Smooth as the silverback scale, memories groove themselves into our person. As life progresses the human brain must triage through substantial material, archives the likes of which it may choose to forget entirely. In some cases, this approach is deemed beneficial. Prosperous are they whose psyche is unmoored by the Nothing, a pure, dense, darkness, that consumes its prey, intimately. In other cases, memories live on in a person nearly overwhelmingly. Proud are they whose psyche is abounded by riches of a life fully lived.
My own experiences with memory lanes, corner stores, melodies, sights, & smells, led me to the stoop of the author who wrote this book. With a vivid & timid lime green background, drawing the eye to a row of marching children, this book encourages the niggling voice within to be met with its best match & ideal companion. I would be speaking in untruths if I said I was not a bit apprehensive about requesting access to this book.
Memories of childhood & the adventurous longing of a coy group of youth make for difficult writing material in stories directed toward adult readers. I have often found authors to have forgotten the experiences of their youth when attempting to craft a young character authentically. Although we have not all lived the same life, there are facets of development which are nearly identical, which is why they are markers set for us all.
Perhaps some readers do not mind coming upon the young character without any semblance of grace or grasp of the real world. They might even forgive the author for presenting their characters as near shadows of a Peter who has been carved out of a shallow-pooled stone.
It is my opinion that encouraging this approach in the literary world does a disservice to all. As generations divide us & our perception of society, & ourselves, transforms, we do well to remember where we came from & to acknowledge that others are coming from somewhere too.
In essence, this is a story about a group of cousins who wander the family property in search of one another. Their arrival at their aunt’s house was done with excitement, there was to be a birthday party. The afternoon ahead of them would be one of comfort—the familiar television set, the snacks, the porch, the adult chatter—the children knew they would have time to enjoy themselves before they were told to pack up & head home.
What they did not anticipate was the turn of events that led to decades of distance. Quaintly, the afternoon of wandering the woods also resulted in their older cousin being found unresponsive in the creek behind their aunt’s house. Their young lives, once opened at the edges thanks to the narration of the adults they trusted, became the cautionary tale of goodness being snubbed out early & cruelty prevailing, once again.
As noted earlier, this book gave me pause. I wanted to trust that the author had a good head on their shoulders & might present the story with earnest dedication. I was pleasantly surprised. Whereas my hopes for a story of childhood adventure had parameters set by my youthful galivanting, Bamford held her cards close to heart, scattering them, soiled with the knowledge she knew the reader would have of concepts encountered in the mature adult world.
The narrator of the tale does not identify themselves. At times I wondered if it would be worth my time to build an image of them in my mind or to list out which child belonged to which adult. By the second chapter, I knew this was not added value; the narrator speaks to the reader from the future.
Like us, they have the benefit of time & experience when recalling the fateful wanderings the group undertook. This certainly added some depth to the otherwise simple story. I do not mean this in any negative way, in fact, the story’s simplicity works to its greater benefit as the reader, no matter their age, will find the flow evocative & insightful, without needing to gleam any rotund dialogue or preposterously complex scene descriptors.
The narrator remained, for me, an invisible figure. Their participation in the retelling of this story did not seem to arise from a need but rather that they were sharing this time in their life as they needed to let it go. As readers work their way through the plot, they will come upon soothingly mature sentences that highlight the narrator’s desire to work through this sequence or to attempt to unriddle what has burdened their memories, all these years.
I will certainly not begrudge the narrator for needing to unburden themselves. Their need to do so resulted in the well-thought-out story that is described on the page. However, the method by which the narrator transcribes their experiences did leave me to ponder. Who was the reader meant to be in this situation?
The narrator does not necessarily familiarly address the reader, nor does the story venture into the format of a written account. I am not of the belief that the narrator is speaking to a mental health professional or a colleague, or even that they are writing a farewell note or an entry in a personal journal.
I wonder about the reader’s role in this story as it allows me to reflect on the narrator’s motivation in telling it. Does the narrator feel remorse for their participation in the events that led to their cousin nearly drowning? Does the narrator wish to revisit these events in an attempt to make sense of the adventurous ravings of their childhood mind?
These questions are not answered & for some readers, this will not pose an issue. The uncertainty behind the necessity of getting this story onto the page was not felt in any negative way, rather, the reader will be a welcomed audience for the narrator, regardless of who they are when they show up.
For this, I am thankful. Bamford’s approach to sharing this story felt authentic, genuine, & well-articulated. Sometimes, sentiments of dread were sprinkled on the periphery of what was being said, whereas other times, the adult mind of the author sheltered the reader from the truth, so that they too might be spared the sorrow of reality.
Walking alongside the children as they spoke to their parents & listened to them converse with each other reminded me greatly of moments in my youth. From a tertiary perspective, the inclusion of the reflections & ruminations shared by the adults added intimate insight to the story. None of the parents, aunts or uncles, could be classified as bad people. Their own childhood experiences with a parent who was wrapped up in her dreams as they unravelled, will encourage readers to remember the duplexity of each situation as presented in this book.
On occasion, I wondered how naïve the adults were being. The children were trying to tell them that someone was wrong, but they didn’t listen. Instead of wondering where their children had disappeared to, as might transpire in the mind of a parent who lives near the city, on a busy road, or in an unusual place, the adults in this story did not question the movements of the cousins. In fact, this was primarily because of the location. Having come together to celebrate a birthday at a house that neighbours the adults’ childhood home, they had no real need to fear.
This brings me to the crux of the story. The narrator describes the politics of the group, the sentiments that festered in each of their hearts as they grew hungry & eager to return home, & the guilt they felt when it became apparent that they had forgotten those whom they were supposed to find.
As the story goes, the children are faced with situations that bring them joy—the candy bars on the freeway—& moments that leave them curious & perturbed—the woman living in their parents’ childhood home. These sequences may raise questions in the throat of the reader that they will come to find are not to be answered for no one is listening for their reply.
Who is the woman in the house & why has her family been photographed there for generations? Why did their grandmother commit suicide with her dogs in tow? Why has the manuscript been kept all these years? What happened at the creek?
In my adult mind, there are many possible answers to these, & many other, questions. The narrator has these same questions too. In attempting to bring clarity to the events that took their breath away, the narrator incorporates elements of premeditation, foreshadowing, & revelations of futuristic occurrences. These do, in fact, allow the reader to wander closer to the truth, without touching its silky spine. However, the complexities of these events remain curious to the reader as the narrator endeavours to close off their memories, for good.
When the oldest cousin is found face-down in the creek, the children begin to posit the events that caused his drowning. Once a child with prospects unmatched, the young boy committed, what was surely, a hate crime—some form of bigotry, racism, or something of the like—towards another child at his “special school” & was subsequently expelled. This young child had all the brightness the sun could offer yet, something in him struggled to be set free.
The reader might believe that he meant to break his sister’s arm, or they might decide that, at the preteen stage of life, any such accident might happen to anyone. In that same breath, the reader might wonder whether the boy’s younger sister might have pushed him into the creek, or whether she might have taunted him into stumbling through the current.
What the reader must come to terms with is that no one will understand what has taken place because the events took place in the past & are being recalled via the memories of a person who was a young child; a person who could not fully grasp the proximity of cruelty, death, & torment, in the body of someone they loved & admired.
My opinions on the matter fall rather short. While reading, I was caught up by the fact that this boy would be hospitalized & rely on machinery to keep him alive, while his brain suffered the consequences of a sustained lack of oxygen.
As I write this review, I look back, over my shoulder to the outdoor greenery that I tumbled through; the leaves, tall autumnal trees, & the fence yonder, which kept us cocooned in the backyard of my grandparent’s house. Yet to the side & back over the other, the yards opened to us & we could just as easily wander into the lot of a tortured soul, a stranger, or into the mouth of a snare. We did none of those things because we knew it was not safe.
I marvel at the child who knows no fear, whose world is grand & bright, & open to their every dream & wandering whim. The children in this story were not ignorant of the complicated existence of adults but they wandered onward still, through darkened trees, into the roadway & the house of a stranger. They opened the stable doors, & walked behind great horse hooves, back over to the body of water that took their kin to a world from which he would never return.
Ultimately, what makes this story so beautifully enrapturing is its ability to act as a testament to the untold great wonders of the blooming world. The children’s adventure that afternoon broke open the seal that decided their fate.
Successfully wading the waters of confusing childhood memories, Bamford welcomes readers to wave the white flag at their younger selves, presenting the sullen & soiled past to the mirrored, calculated, version of themselves.
The narrator grieves the innocuous existence of the person they once were. One that saw the green grass as home to foot races, magnificent & heroic battles, hiding & seeking, building & emboldening the spirit of the person they hoped to become.
Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, & Krystelle Bamford for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Smooth as the silverback scale, memories groove themselves into our person. As life progresses the human brain must triage through substantial material, archives the likes of which it may choose to forget entirely. In some cases, this approach is deemed beneficial. Prosperous are they whose psyche is unmoored by the Nothing, a pure, dense, darkness, that consumes its prey, intimately. In other cases, memories live on in a person nearly overwhelmingly. Proud are they whose psyche is abounded by riches of a life fully lived.
My own experiences with memory lanes, corner stores, melodies, sights, & smells, led me to the stoop of the author who wrote this book. With a vivid & timid lime green background, drawing the eye to a row of marching children, this book encourages the niggling voice within to be met with its best match & ideal companion. I would be speaking in untruths if I said I was not a bit apprehensive about requesting access to this book.
Memories of childhood & the adventurous longing of a coy group of youth make for difficult writing material in stories directed toward adult readers. I have often found authors to have forgotten the experiences of their youth when attempting to craft a young character authentically. Although we have not all lived the same life, there are facets of development which are nearly identical, which is why they are markers set for us all.
Perhaps some readers do not mind coming upon the young character without any semblance of grace or grasp of the real world. They might even forgive the author for presenting their characters as near shadows of a Peter who has been carved out of a shallow-pooled stone.
It is my opinion that encouraging this approach in the literary world does a disservice to all. As generations divide us & our perception of society, & ourselves, transforms, we do well to remember where we came from & to acknowledge that others are coming from somewhere too.
In essence, this is a story about a group of cousins who wander the family property in search of one another. Their arrival at their aunt’s house was done with excitement, there was to be a birthday party. The afternoon ahead of them would be one of comfort—the familiar television set, the snacks, the porch, the adult chatter—the children knew they would have time to enjoy themselves before they were told to pack up & head home.
What they did not anticipate was the turn of events that led to decades of distance. Quaintly, the afternoon of wandering the woods also resulted in their older cousin being found unresponsive in the creek behind their aunt’s house. Their young lives, once opened at the edges thanks to the narration of the adults they trusted, became the cautionary tale of goodness being snubbed out early & cruelty prevailing, once again.
As noted earlier, this book gave me pause. I wanted to trust that the author had a good head on their shoulders & might present the story with earnest dedication. I was pleasantly surprised. Whereas my hopes for a story of childhood adventure had parameters set by my youthful galivanting, Bamford held her cards close to heart, scattering them, soiled with the knowledge she knew the reader would have of concepts encountered in the mature adult world.
The narrator of the tale does not identify themselves. At times I wondered if it would be worth my time to build an image of them in my mind or to list out which child belonged to which adult. By the second chapter, I knew this was not added value; the narrator speaks to the reader from the future.
Like us, they have the benefit of time & experience when recalling the fateful wanderings the group undertook. This certainly added some depth to the otherwise simple story. I do not mean this in any negative way, in fact, the story’s simplicity works to its greater benefit as the reader, no matter their age, will find the flow evocative & insightful, without needing to gleam any rotund dialogue or preposterously complex scene descriptors.
The narrator remained, for me, an invisible figure. Their participation in the retelling of this story did not seem to arise from a need but rather that they were sharing this time in their life as they needed to let it go. As readers work their way through the plot, they will come upon soothingly mature sentences that highlight the narrator’s desire to work through this sequence or to attempt to unriddle what has burdened their memories, all these years.
I will certainly not begrudge the narrator for needing to unburden themselves. Their need to do so resulted in the well-thought-out story that is described on the page. However, the method by which the narrator transcribes their experiences did leave me to ponder. Who was the reader meant to be in this situation?
The narrator does not necessarily familiarly address the reader, nor does the story venture into the format of a written account. I am not of the belief that the narrator is speaking to a mental health professional or a colleague, or even that they are writing a farewell note or an entry in a personal journal.
I wonder about the reader’s role in this story as it allows me to reflect on the narrator’s motivation in telling it. Does the narrator feel remorse for their participation in the events that led to their cousin nearly drowning? Does the narrator wish to revisit these events in an attempt to make sense of the adventurous ravings of their childhood mind?
These questions are not answered & for some readers, this will not pose an issue. The uncertainty behind the necessity of getting this story onto the page was not felt in any negative way, rather, the reader will be a welcomed audience for the narrator, regardless of who they are when they show up.
For this, I am thankful. Bamford’s approach to sharing this story felt authentic, genuine, & well-articulated. Sometimes, sentiments of dread were sprinkled on the periphery of what was being said, whereas other times, the adult mind of the author sheltered the reader from the truth, so that they too might be spared the sorrow of reality.
Walking alongside the children as they spoke to their parents & listened to them converse with each other reminded me greatly of moments in my youth. From a tertiary perspective, the inclusion of the reflections & ruminations shared by the adults added intimate insight to the story. None of the parents, aunts or uncles, could be classified as bad people. Their own childhood experiences with a parent who was wrapped up in her dreams as they unravelled, will encourage readers to remember the duplexity of each situation as presented in this book.
On occasion, I wondered how naïve the adults were being. The children were trying to tell them that someone was wrong, but they didn’t listen. Instead of wondering where their children had disappeared to, as might transpire in the mind of a parent who lives near the city, on a busy road, or in an unusual place, the adults in this story did not question the movements of the cousins. In fact, this was primarily because of the location. Having come together to celebrate a birthday at a house that neighbours the adults’ childhood home, they had no real need to fear.
This brings me to the crux of the story. The narrator describes the politics of the group, the sentiments that festered in each of their hearts as they grew hungry & eager to return home, & the guilt they felt when it became apparent that they had forgotten those whom they were supposed to find.
As the story goes, the children are faced with situations that bring them joy—the candy bars on the freeway—& moments that leave them curious & perturbed—the woman living in their parents’ childhood home. These sequences may raise questions in the throat of the reader that they will come to find are not to be answered for no one is listening for their reply.
Who is the woman in the house & why has her family been photographed there for generations? Why did their grandmother commit suicide with her dogs in tow? Why has the manuscript been kept all these years? What happened at the creek?
In my adult mind, there are many possible answers to these, & many other, questions. The narrator has these same questions too. In attempting to bring clarity to the events that took their breath away, the narrator incorporates elements of premeditation, foreshadowing, & revelations of futuristic occurrences. These do, in fact, allow the reader to wander closer to the truth, without touching its silky spine. However, the complexities of these events remain curious to the reader as the narrator endeavours to close off their memories, for good.
When the oldest cousin is found face-down in the creek, the children begin to posit the events that caused his drowning. Once a child with prospects unmatched, the young boy committed, what was surely, a hate crime—some form of bigotry, racism, or something of the like—towards another child at his “special school” & was subsequently expelled. This young child had all the brightness the sun could offer yet, something in him struggled to be set free.
The reader might believe that he meant to break his sister’s arm, or they might decide that, at the preteen stage of life, any such accident might happen to anyone. In that same breath, the reader might wonder whether the boy’s younger sister might have pushed him into the creek, or whether she might have taunted him into stumbling through the current.
What the reader must come to terms with is that no one will understand what has taken place because the events took place in the past & are being recalled via the memories of a person who was a young child; a person who could not fully grasp the proximity of cruelty, death, & torment, in the body of someone they loved & admired.
My opinions on the matter fall rather short. While reading, I was caught up by the fact that this boy would be hospitalized & rely on machinery to keep him alive, while his brain suffered the consequences of a sustained lack of oxygen.
As I write this review, I look back, over my shoulder to the outdoor greenery that I tumbled through; the leaves, tall autumnal trees, & the fence yonder, which kept us cocooned in the backyard of my grandparent’s house. Yet to the side & back over the other, the yards opened to us & we could just as easily wander into the lot of a tortured soul, a stranger, or into the mouth of a snare. We did none of those things because we knew it was not safe.
I marvel at the child who knows no fear, whose world is grand & bright, & open to their every dream & wandering whim. The children in this story were not ignorant of the complicated existence of adults but they wandered onward still, through darkened trees, into the roadway & the house of a stranger. They opened the stable doors, & walked behind great horse hooves, back over to the body of water that took their kin to a world from which he would never return.
Ultimately, what makes this story so beautifully enrapturing is its ability to act as a testament to the untold great wonders of the blooming world. The children’s adventure that afternoon broke open the seal that decided their fate.
Successfully wading the waters of confusing childhood memories, Bamford welcomes readers to wave the white flag at their younger selves, presenting the sullen & soiled past to the mirrored, calculated, version of themselves.
The narrator grieves the innocuous existence of the person they once were. One that saw the green grass as home to foot races, magnificent & heroic battles, hiding & seeking, building & emboldening the spirit of the person they hoped to become.
Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, & Krystelle Bamford for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2025
Do I understand why the average rating for this is so low? Yes.
Did I absolutely devour it and give it 4.5 stars? Also yes.
Bamford is such a talented writer who captures the essence of childhood perfectly. The story involves a group of cousins exploring their family's property after one of them goes missing, but be warned: it's not quite a typical mystery or horror (I have no idea why it's shelved as a horror on Goodreads). As the story is told in first-person plural retrospectively, it takes a little bit to get your bearings, but ultimately it sticks the landing.
The death of the family matriarch is the catalyst behind much of the book, and we delve into the complicated dynamics between her surviving children. The child protagonists attempt to piece together their family's history through overhead conversations, but the reader is offered no clarity. There's a sense of imagination and childlike innocence in how the events unfold, which results in open-ended conclusions and plot arcs, but reflects the narration style perfectly. Normally, I shy away from child narrators in literary fiction (it's a hard voice to get right without feeling cheesy or forced), but like Brutes: when it's done right, it is damn good.
Idle Grounds is incredibly atmospheric and uses the setting to its full advantage. From the onset, we know something foreboding is coming, but it's never clear until the final pages. What emerges is a story about childhood innocence and the events that demarcate its loss.
I'd be hesitant to recommend this, but Bamford has definitely made a fan out of me with this debut.
---
short? weird? low rated? either I'm giving this a 5 or 2
Did I absolutely devour it and give it 4.5 stars? Also yes.
Bamford is such a talented writer who captures the essence of childhood perfectly. The story involves a group of cousins exploring their family's property after one of them goes missing, but be warned: it's not quite a typical mystery or horror (I have no idea why it's shelved as a horror on Goodreads). As the story is told in first-person plural retrospectively, it takes a little bit to get your bearings, but ultimately it sticks the landing.
The death of the family matriarch is the catalyst behind much of the book, and we delve into the complicated dynamics between her surviving children. The child protagonists attempt to piece together their family's history through overhead conversations, but the reader is offered no clarity. There's a sense of imagination and childlike innocence in how the events unfold, which results in open-ended conclusions and plot arcs, but reflects the narration style perfectly. Normally, I shy away from child narrators in literary fiction (it's a hard voice to get right without feeling cheesy or forced), but like Brutes: when it's done right, it is damn good.
Idle Grounds is incredibly atmospheric and uses the setting to its full advantage. From the onset, we know something foreboding is coming, but it's never clear until the final pages. What emerges is a story about childhood innocence and the events that demarcate its loss.
I'd be hesitant to recommend this, but Bamford has definitely made a fan out of me with this debut.
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short? weird? low rated? either I'm giving this a 5 or 2
January 12, 2025
Idle Grounds is described as a Reagan-era Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys. Set in the 1980s, a group of cousins get together when their families gather for a birthday party. There's cake and old grudges and cheeze-balls, all inside the kind of house which can both only exist in your memories...and in the 80s.
The story starts off strange, with one of the cousins disappearing, "swallowed" by the house, and only gets stranger from there. As they set out to find this missing cousin, they discover weirder and harder to explain things along the way, stumbling upon family secrets and the legacies they themselves may someday step into.
It's written in a completely unique way, from the perspective of a child. But it isn't juvenile! Rather, full of tiny little insights only someone young and wide-eyed can make.
In many ways, this is a classic mystery. Girl vanishes // people try to find her. What I didn't expect from this little novel was a profound exploration of generational trauma, and the fraught nature of memories. We are an amalgamation of everyone and everything around us, after all.
It packs a punch, is what I'm trying to say.
The story starts off strange, with one of the cousins disappearing, "swallowed" by the house, and only gets stranger from there. As they set out to find this missing cousin, they discover weirder and harder to explain things along the way, stumbling upon family secrets and the legacies they themselves may someday step into.
It's written in a completely unique way, from the perspective of a child. But it isn't juvenile! Rather, full of tiny little insights only someone young and wide-eyed can make.
In many ways, this is a classic mystery. Girl vanishes // people try to find her. What I didn't expect from this little novel was a profound exploration of generational trauma, and the fraught nature of memories. We are an amalgamation of everyone and everything around us, after all.
It packs a punch, is what I'm trying to say.
March 4, 2025
✰ 2.75 stars ✰
The moral of Krystelle Bamford's debut novel is that children should never be left to their own devices without adult supervision, for only disastrous results will follow in its wake. Or better yet, avoid Idle Grounds at all cost, for nestling in those places where stillness resides lies the heart of something desperate to claw out and make its presence known.
Well, that is the ambiguous if not figurative theme of the story, anyway. 🥺
“... When everything was sweet and good and lucky but that day was not this one. Looking back, we should have taken it as a sign.”
Having the story retold in a retrospective manner with an unnamed genderless narrator made for an interesting, if not double-edged sword - but that’s the absolute power of narrative convention for you. In that, the voice could fluctuate between that of the child present during the family gathering that would greatly impact their lives, and that of the one who is aware of what tide follows in the wake of those events. 😟 With that, we do get the casual inserts of directing comments to the reader, while also having brief intermezzos that shed light on past moments involving the respective cousins' parents.
But, that is not what stood out for me. What made this short read - not exactly a favorable one, but a compelling mystery was in the way, the author subtly built on the suspense with a foreboding feeling of something ominous was about to occur - ...but if you are then you know nothing about fear. 😥👍🏻 Descriptive details that created that strange translucent sense of not seeing clearly - from the strange glimpse the cousins fleeting catch before they set off on their excursion to find their missing cousin, to the unsettling unease of questioning uncertainty that permeated through the multiple places they searched in - the interactions and actions were steadily building up to an explosive moment that would shatter this almost dreamlike ambience they found themselves trapped in. 🥺
“We were made to forget them, I think, and also we very much wanted to.”
It took me awhile to catch on to the correlation between the parents' history with their mother, Bezzy, to that of their offsprings' current situation, till clues are introduced that shed light on unspoken truths that rattle their senses and everything they've believed in. It disrupts their thoughts and breaks down their conscience to match the unpleasant, eerily uncomfortable places they were forced to go through. 🤔 '... Feeling I think on some level that they had failed us again just as we’d failed ourselves.' The evasive and less than satisfying feeling from the ending left me deeply unfulfilled. But, when I do think about it, I do feel that what transpired was the psyche of innate parental attributes that children inherit without even realizing it.
“I think probably what an artist is really there to do is to tear a big hole in the maddening patterns, to create something that is so itself that it repels everything around it.”
To highlight this quote even before I read the final chapter definitely brings a lot into perspective. It is haunting and shattering; shattering even more than the dark and creepy vibes that the cousins embraced and encountered during their efforts to rescue themselves. 😢 Parents who ignore their children - too caught up in their own pains and woes - not knowing that unrest is brewing even amongst their own kin. It is but one moment that may be inconsequential, even though, in that moment, it was life-altering - fearful and frightening. And yet, that reflective, nostalgic air in which the story ends, shows that it did leave a mark - 'but you never can tell, you never did know if it changed their lives for the better or not, simply that it did. 😔
“Was that all? Surely not. Surely we were looking for something. We had lost something and were here to retrieve it. We were here to bring it back home.”
The moral of Krystelle Bamford's debut novel is that children should never be left to their own devices without adult supervision, for only disastrous results will follow in its wake. Or better yet, avoid Idle Grounds at all cost, for nestling in those places where stillness resides lies the heart of something desperate to claw out and make its presence known.
Well, that is the ambiguous if not figurative theme of the story, anyway. 🥺
“... When everything was sweet and good and lucky but that day was not this one. Looking back, we should have taken it as a sign.”
Having the story retold in a retrospective manner with an unnamed genderless narrator made for an interesting, if not double-edged sword - but that’s the absolute power of narrative convention for you. In that, the voice could fluctuate between that of the child present during the family gathering that would greatly impact their lives, and that of the one who is aware of what tide follows in the wake of those events. 😟 With that, we do get the casual inserts of directing comments to the reader, while also having brief intermezzos that shed light on past moments involving the respective cousins' parents.
But, that is not what stood out for me. What made this short read - not exactly a favorable one, but a compelling mystery was in the way, the author subtly built on the suspense with a foreboding feeling of something ominous was about to occur - ...but if you are then you know nothing about fear. 😥👍🏻 Descriptive details that created that strange translucent sense of not seeing clearly - from the strange glimpse the cousins fleeting catch before they set off on their excursion to find their missing cousin, to the unsettling unease of questioning uncertainty that permeated through the multiple places they searched in - the interactions and actions were steadily building up to an explosive moment that would shatter this almost dreamlike ambience they found themselves trapped in. 🥺
“We were made to forget them, I think, and also we very much wanted to.”
It took me awhile to catch on to the correlation between the parents' history with their mother, Bezzy, to that of their offsprings' current situation, till clues are introduced that shed light on unspoken truths that rattle their senses and everything they've believed in. It disrupts their thoughts and breaks down their conscience to match the unpleasant, eerily uncomfortable places they were forced to go through. 🤔 '... Feeling I think on some level that they had failed us again just as we’d failed ourselves.' The evasive and less than satisfying feeling from the ending left me deeply unfulfilled. But, when I do think about it, I do feel that what transpired was the psyche of innate parental attributes that children inherit without even realizing it.
“I think probably what an artist is really there to do is to tear a big hole in the maddening patterns, to create something that is so itself that it repels everything around it.”
To highlight this quote even before I read the final chapter definitely brings a lot into perspective. It is haunting and shattering; shattering even more than the dark and creepy vibes that the cousins embraced and encountered during their efforts to rescue themselves. 😢 Parents who ignore their children - too caught up in their own pains and woes - not knowing that unrest is brewing even amongst their own kin. It is but one moment that may be inconsequential, even though, in that moment, it was life-altering - fearful and frightening. And yet, that reflective, nostalgic air in which the story ends, shows that it did leave a mark - 'but you never can tell, you never did know if it changed their lives for the better or not, simply that it did. 😔
April 5, 2025
A group of elementary-school-aged cousins set off into the woods to find their youngest cousin, who has wandered off. Throughout the narrative, there is a creeping sense of unease, as the cousins—and the reader—become disoriented by their surroundings.
I really enjoyed this book’s narrative style. It’s told from a first-person plural POV, which really situates the reader within the group of cousins. The parents are distant and caught up in their own problems, ignoring the children to the point that the narrators must reassure the reader that they are not ghosts. This book has immaculate vibes. It’s set in the 1980s within a downwardly mobile old-money family, and there’s a sense of disorder and decay.
This wasn’t one of my favourite reads this year, but I still think it’s worth your time!
I really enjoyed this book’s narrative style. It’s told from a first-person plural POV, which really situates the reader within the group of cousins. The parents are distant and caught up in their own problems, ignoring the children to the point that the narrators must reassure the reader that they are not ghosts. This book has immaculate vibes. It’s set in the 1980s within a downwardly mobile old-money family, and there’s a sense of disorder and decay.
This wasn’t one of my favourite reads this year, but I still think it’s worth your time!
June 23, 2025
Bamford reminds me of author Daisy Johnson. They have an ability to write way outside the box, to reinvent sentences and general observations and to place their characters in both domestic and wild ways. They both lean heavily on myth and fairytales (in this one Bamford doesn't hide it's largely based on Hansel & Gretel, even writing: "Like Hansel and Gretel, in fact, it was always the parents"). The forest, she remarks, is "really just a repetition of patterns; it's why people lose their minds in forests..."
Set during a time near to when I grew up, I especially enjoyed the historical references to food (junk food, of course), clothing, etc. But what resonated the most was that feeling of invisibility we had with our parents much of the time, in comparison to the helicopter parents of the next generation. This creepy mystery resides in that neglected space.
Her prose stands out: "The horses were black, with their necks bent at unnatural angles like articulated straws." And her setting is atmospheric, intended I think to be timeless in a way.
I wish I understood the ending....though there are enough clues for the reader to gather up like crumbs and walk back out of this forest, confused and wary of dysfunctional families. Not everyone will be comfortable with that, so I recommend this for literary readers.
Set during a time near to when I grew up, I especially enjoyed the historical references to food (junk food, of course), clothing, etc. But what resonated the most was that feeling of invisibility we had with our parents much of the time, in comparison to the helicopter parents of the next generation. This creepy mystery resides in that neglected space.
Her prose stands out: "The horses were black, with their necks bent at unnatural angles like articulated straws." And her setting is atmospheric, intended I think to be timeless in a way.
I wish I understood the ending....though there are enough clues for the reader to gather up like crumbs and walk back out of this forest, confused and wary of dysfunctional families. Not everyone will be comfortable with that, so I recommend this for literary readers.
March 2, 2025
The strange period between 2-3am when you're not sure what is real is absolutely the peak time to read this novel, a story of a group of children who possibly spot something mysterious during a family gathering.
I'm not sure what this story wanted to show us though, it was meandering and didn't go anywhere, it was often fatphobic and I didn't care for the characters. The ending chapters didn't add anything and I'm just glad it was short.
I'm not sure what this story wanted to show us though, it was meandering and didn't go anywhere, it was often fatphobic and I didn't care for the characters. The ending chapters didn't add anything and I'm just glad it was short.
April 24, 2025
quite an odd experience to read a book that's so vivid yet so vague - it feels like a fever dream into someone else's memories.
a sunny day at the edge of the woods, a group of young cousins in the 1980s, a mysterious and disquieting sense of doom. the first person plural "we" narration is engaging. it makes me miss the feeling of being a child, roaming in a pack of kids, our individual identities less important than our collective identity.
this childhood mindset is remarkably lucid, as are the sun-drenched forest, the driveway and paddock and other parts of the property that the kids explore. it's reflective and nostalgic, and the kiddo dialogue is also impeccably real, with some powerful insights and some unexpectedly funny moments. all this with an undercurrent of darkness, as the smallest cousin is missing, the adults are dismissive, and the group is left to search on their own.
all these vivid details, yet the actual events of the book are ultimately ambiguous. it's a dizzying contrast, and i suppose it works well with the perspective of children, who are often sheltered from the full truths of their own realities.
this story is nowhere near as impactful, but it reminded me a bit of fever dream, in which you know something is profoundly wrong, but can't articulate just what is happening.
a sunny day at the edge of the woods, a group of young cousins in the 1980s, a mysterious and disquieting sense of doom. the first person plural "we" narration is engaging. it makes me miss the feeling of being a child, roaming in a pack of kids, our individual identities less important than our collective identity.
this childhood mindset is remarkably lucid, as are the sun-drenched forest, the driveway and paddock and other parts of the property that the kids explore. it's reflective and nostalgic, and the kiddo dialogue is also impeccably real, with some powerful insights and some unexpectedly funny moments. all this with an undercurrent of darkness, as the smallest cousin is missing, the adults are dismissive, and the group is left to search on their own.
all these vivid details, yet the actual events of the book are ultimately ambiguous. it's a dizzying contrast, and i suppose it works well with the perspective of children, who are often sheltered from the full truths of their own realities.
this story is nowhere near as impactful, but it reminded me a bit of fever dream, in which you know something is profoundly wrong, but can't articulate just what is happening.
May 16, 2025
IDLE GROUNDS by Krystelle Bamford
Thank you @scribnerbooks for my gifted ARC.
Set in 1980s New England, Idle Grounds follows a group of cousins searching for a missing child in the deep, eerie woods of their family's property. Told in a mesmerizing collective voice, this novel weaves family secrets, mystery, and a touch of the uncanny.
The highlights for me were the writing—clever, peculiar, and utterly engaging—and the author's astute exploration of the divide between children and their parents. Bamford clearly understands children; she’s either a parent, works closely with children, or has an extraordinary memory of her own childhood.
Idle Grounds is unlike anything I've read before. If you like imaginative, atmospheric, wholly original literary fiction, this one's for you!
📌 Available now!
Thank you @scribnerbooks for my gifted ARC.
Set in 1980s New England, Idle Grounds follows a group of cousins searching for a missing child in the deep, eerie woods of their family's property. Told in a mesmerizing collective voice, this novel weaves family secrets, mystery, and a touch of the uncanny.
The highlights for me were the writing—clever, peculiar, and utterly engaging—and the author's astute exploration of the divide between children and their parents. Bamford clearly understands children; she’s either a parent, works closely with children, or has an extraordinary memory of her own childhood.
Idle Grounds is unlike anything I've read before. If you like imaginative, atmospheric, wholly original literary fiction, this one's for you!
📌 Available now!
March 18, 2025
Capture the logical and realities of childhood while walking the line of adult hindsight. So many whimsical observations that brought me back to being with cousins in my grandmothers yard. The adult world given to us in snippets that we must make conclusions after running in and out of kitchens. And there is clearly a center with which all their lives revolve as a family which is ever present even when unspoken. A beautiful portrait of inheritance and the things we get whether we want them or not.
Read
March 6, 2025I loved the language of this short novel and how vividly the setting appeared in my head. The characters of the children were wonderfully drawn and the sections from their POV were my favorite. The sections retreating to the past, which focused on the adults, were less compelling to me. I kept getting impatient to return to the presence and to the search for the missing girl (I can't go into detail about that without giving spoilers, but it drives most of the plot forward). I might be an outlier here, but I wanted more information at the end about the event the children didn't witness, though the image of the girl with wet pigtails will stick with me for a while.
October 30, 2024
I received an advanced reader’s edition of this book from the goodreads giveaway. I truly struggled reading this book. It felt like a chore and multiple times I contemplated whether or not to just DNF it. The story just felt like rambling throughout the whole book.
October 10, 2024
An eerie triumph of voice and atmosphere, this is hard to write about because it is nebulous and ill-defined, but that’s kind of the point - it’s the wide-eyed wonder of a childhood day spent outdoors exploring somewhere new you’re not really supposed to be. It has a magical realism vibe, where things aren’t necessarily logical but make emotional sense, with an ominous undertow bubbling away.
March 7, 2025
Compelling and strange, Idle Grounds is a story about a group of young cousins at a summertime family get-together in 1980s New England. When one of the cousins, a three-year-old named Abi, disappears into the woods bordering the property, the rest venture off to find her – a journey that leads to some unsettling discoveries.
Written mostly in the first-person plural, as the cousins reminisce on the events as adults, Idle Grounds is a singular reading experience. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that captures the magic, peculiarity, and well, menace of childhood quite like this one does. Krystelle Bamford’s writing is incredible; she evokes a strong sense of time and place, and her prose manages to be both lyrical and full of foreboding. This is an unsettling, atmospheric read that left me feeling wrong-footed throughout. Everything feels kind of…slippery, if that makes sense. Like you’re reading the story through some kind of veil – which is actually so fitting, since that’s precisely how it feels to look back on childhood sometimes.
Bamford explores family secrets from the perspective of the children in the family, and it’s incredibly effective. The complicated relationships among the adults are juxtaposed with the more innocent interactions of the young cousins, although you still get the sense that some of the children are harboring secrets of their own. There’s a lot happening beneath the surface of the “missing cousin” story, is what I’m saying.
Idle Grounds is a short novel, but it’s just about the right length. Any longer and it would have felt like too much; any shorter, and a lot of the subtext would be missing. Even so, I’m not sure I caught or understood everything that was happening. Finishing the book felt like waking from a fever dream; it completely immersed me in its strange, ethereal world while I was reading it, and I can still kind of feel it lingering on my skin. Thank you to Scribner for the complimentary reading opportunity.
Written mostly in the first-person plural, as the cousins reminisce on the events as adults, Idle Grounds is a singular reading experience. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that captures the magic, peculiarity, and well, menace of childhood quite like this one does. Krystelle Bamford’s writing is incredible; she evokes a strong sense of time and place, and her prose manages to be both lyrical and full of foreboding. This is an unsettling, atmospheric read that left me feeling wrong-footed throughout. Everything feels kind of…slippery, if that makes sense. Like you’re reading the story through some kind of veil – which is actually so fitting, since that’s precisely how it feels to look back on childhood sometimes.
Bamford explores family secrets from the perspective of the children in the family, and it’s incredibly effective. The complicated relationships among the adults are juxtaposed with the more innocent interactions of the young cousins, although you still get the sense that some of the children are harboring secrets of their own. There’s a lot happening beneath the surface of the “missing cousin” story, is what I’m saying.
Idle Grounds is a short novel, but it’s just about the right length. Any longer and it would have felt like too much; any shorter, and a lot of the subtext would be missing. Even so, I’m not sure I caught or understood everything that was happening. Finishing the book felt like waking from a fever dream; it completely immersed me in its strange, ethereal world while I was reading it, and I can still kind of feel it lingering on my skin. Thank you to Scribner for the complimentary reading opportunity.
November 25, 2024
I had super high hopes for this when I saw the cover (the UK one) and I was so glad it completely exceeded my expectations.
This is one strange little book, and I loved it!! Do you ever get that feeling when you come across a new writer, and their style and use of language makes you shamelessly excited? Like you've just discovered something you can't wait to tell people about. This was Idle Grounds for me.
The novel is set in New England in 1989, and follows a group of kid cousins who are all at a family member's house for a birthday party. Whilst the adults are all in the kitchen catching up, the eldest cousin, Travis, immediately tells them all to follow him up to the top of the house to look at something. As they stare out of the window, overlooking the garden, they all see something. Whatever it is zips across the garden, seemingly too quick for anyone to make out exactly what it is. Then, the youngest cousin, Abi, runs out after it. And so begins their hunt, through the garden, the chicken coop, the cars parked in the driveway, the woodlands, and so on. Each chapter is headed by the location of where they will be looking next, desperately searching for young Abi. The parents meanwhile, are of course oblivious.
The novel takes some unexpected turns, and the whole time you are left with a sense of unwavering unease, unable to predict what might happen next. I admit I spent the whole novel thinking something else entirely was going on, and it certainly didn't end up where I expected it to. At first I was disappointed, but once I re-read the final chapter I realised just how clever the book as a whole truly is.
Krystelle's writing is genuinely such a breath of fresh air. It's exciting and playful, funny and sinister, punchy yet poetic, and above all, extremely clever.
This is already going in the line-up for my best book of 2025, and I really can't wait to see what Krystelle writes next.
This is one strange little book, and I loved it!! Do you ever get that feeling when you come across a new writer, and their style and use of language makes you shamelessly excited? Like you've just discovered something you can't wait to tell people about. This was Idle Grounds for me.
The novel is set in New England in 1989, and follows a group of kid cousins who are all at a family member's house for a birthday party. Whilst the adults are all in the kitchen catching up, the eldest cousin, Travis, immediately tells them all to follow him up to the top of the house to look at something. As they stare out of the window, overlooking the garden, they all see something. Whatever it is zips across the garden, seemingly too quick for anyone to make out exactly what it is. Then, the youngest cousin, Abi, runs out after it. And so begins their hunt, through the garden, the chicken coop, the cars parked in the driveway, the woodlands, and so on. Each chapter is headed by the location of where they will be looking next, desperately searching for young Abi. The parents meanwhile, are of course oblivious.
The novel takes some unexpected turns, and the whole time you are left with a sense of unwavering unease, unable to predict what might happen next. I admit I spent the whole novel thinking something else entirely was going on, and it certainly didn't end up where I expected it to. At first I was disappointed, but once I re-read the final chapter I realised just how clever the book as a whole truly is.
Krystelle's writing is genuinely such a breath of fresh air. It's exciting and playful, funny and sinister, punchy yet poetic, and above all, extremely clever.
This is already going in the line-up for my best book of 2025, and I really can't wait to see what Krystelle writes next.
January 28, 2025
[Copy provided by publisher]
READ IF YOU LIKE...
• Child's clarity through an adult's hindsight
• Family drama
• Atmospheric tension
I THOUGHT IT WAS...
An insightful exploration of family, parenthood and childhood. An extended family comes together for a family party. As often happens, the children of the gathering drift off from the parents to form their own group. But when the youngest cousin goes missing, the ordinary gathering turns tense as the rest of the children venture into the forest to look for her.
Bamford's writing is incisive, describing feelings from childhood with exactitude that you can immediately recognize and relate to. The family of the novel is also recognizable, one with underlying tensions that get uncomfortably rehashed every holiday or occasion. The child's perspective on these complex family dynamics throws into harsh relief how unhappy adults -- especially parents -- often are.
I also liked the way Bamford described the dynamics between the children, the way defacto leaders emerge, the way things can snowball to cause intense joy or sudden hate. All in all, I think this was a great exploration into family and having kids, but I didn't necessarily pick up on the themes the book is marketed to have, like "the sinister histories of property and privilege" or "the distortions of wealth." They're there, lurking in the background, but not the focal point I was led to believe.
READ IF YOU LIKE...
• Child's clarity through an adult's hindsight
• Family drama
• Atmospheric tension
I THOUGHT IT WAS...
An insightful exploration of family, parenthood and childhood. An extended family comes together for a family party. As often happens, the children of the gathering drift off from the parents to form their own group. But when the youngest cousin goes missing, the ordinary gathering turns tense as the rest of the children venture into the forest to look for her.
Bamford's writing is incisive, describing feelings from childhood with exactitude that you can immediately recognize and relate to. The family of the novel is also recognizable, one with underlying tensions that get uncomfortably rehashed every holiday or occasion. The child's perspective on these complex family dynamics throws into harsh relief how unhappy adults -- especially parents -- often are.
I also liked the way Bamford described the dynamics between the children, the way defacto leaders emerge, the way things can snowball to cause intense joy or sudden hate. All in all, I think this was a great exploration into family and having kids, but I didn't necessarily pick up on the themes the book is marketed to have, like "the sinister histories of property and privilege" or "the distortions of wealth." They're there, lurking in the background, but not the focal point I was led to believe.
February 19, 2025
At first glance, IDLE GROUNDS by Krystelle Bamford should’ve been a huge hit for me. I found the 1980s timeline, New England setting, and family gathering storyline really appealing. Unfortunately, the author’s writing style simply did not work for me. This debut was a struggle to get through, book friends. It rambled on and on about random things that I found boring and confusing, which made it impossible for me to connect to the characters. I honestly think that the point of this story just went way over my head. I don’t think I quite grasped what the author was trying to convey. I was basically skimming towards the end to get it finished. It’s a short book—around 200 pages—so that’s the only reason I didn’t DNF it. Sadly, IDLE GROUNDS was just not for me.
July 3, 2025
Just vibes.
At a family gathering, a little girl goes missing and it’s up to all of her cousins to find her. They search around the family property, eventually finding themselves drawn to the sprawling woods and the mysteries that lurk within.
This novel is successful at creating a mixture of eerie atmosphere and childlike wonder. A creative way of exploring family lore and secrets. And a reminder to the reader of the dizzying effect of childhood (the constant state of being in the unknown, yet filled with curious wonder).
I was initially really vibing with this novel for all the reasons above, but it fell short. It didn’t add up to anything and it petered out to vagueness. Repetitive, lacking impact, and ultimately forgettable. A shame. But I’ll definitely look out for the author’s next project whenever that comes because there’s definitely great promise here.
At a family gathering, a little girl goes missing and it’s up to all of her cousins to find her. They search around the family property, eventually finding themselves drawn to the sprawling woods and the mysteries that lurk within.
This novel is successful at creating a mixture of eerie atmosphere and childlike wonder. A creative way of exploring family lore and secrets. And a reminder to the reader of the dizzying effect of childhood (the constant state of being in the unknown, yet filled with curious wonder).
I was initially really vibing with this novel for all the reasons above, but it fell short. It didn’t add up to anything and it petered out to vagueness. Repetitive, lacking impact, and ultimately forgettable. A shame. But I’ll definitely look out for the author’s next project whenever that comes because there’s definitely great promise here.
May 1, 2025
pleasantly new-feeling, only occasionally twee; hits its fucking marks on family business. similar to your kevin wilsons or taz muirs in possessing a voice evidently assembled online but not simply reproducing it.
July 23, 2025
This one didn't work for me - despite the vivid atmosphere it creates and the assured writing style.
We have a group of children at a country house family gathering, looking for a missing sibling, possibly snatched by a large animal. The adults don't care and the children drift ever further away from the house.
The book doesn't try to please, which is usually a good thing, but in this case makes it all quite bleak.
But the main reason I couldn't get into it are the constant digressions and side alleys it plunges into.
We have a group of children at a country house family gathering, looking for a missing sibling, possibly snatched by a large animal. The adults don't care and the children drift ever further away from the house.
The book doesn't try to please, which is usually a good thing, but in this case makes it all quite bleak.
But the main reason I couldn't get into it are the constant digressions and side alleys it plunges into.
March 15, 2025
DNF at 29%
I absolutely love the cover of this short novel, I liked the idea of the story, but the writing rambles on and on and I just lost interest. This wasn’t for me I’m afraid.
Thank you Random House UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
I absolutely love the cover of this short novel, I liked the idea of the story, but the writing rambles on and on and I just lost interest. This wasn’t for me I’m afraid.
Thank you Random House UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
March 1, 2025
A group of four cousins ranging in age from very young to twelve go into the forest behind their aunt's house to search for their even littler cousin who's wandered off and gone missing. The narrative voice is that of one of the cousins, now older, reflecting on the events that transpired in a kind of "an adventure I had as a kid" essay, interspersed with tidbits of information about the adults in the family to add context.
The book was not what I expected with its description of "strange" and "uncanny visions" and it being tagged as horror on goodreads. That is mostly inaccurate. There are strange things that happen occasionally but they are easily interpretable as things a child on a big forest adventure might imagine. I kept thinking of the cartoon Rugrats, a gang of babies doing normal baby things but imagining them into big grand life-changing experiences. Because as a kid, they are.
The author really nailed the child perspective, noticing things that children notice in the way that children notice them (for example, a garden hose is given much attention and the nozzle is described as looking like an animal with its ears back). This was what I enjoyed most about the book, having to pay attention to things I would normally disregard and to see the world again through a child's eye. It was fun and refreshing and I really enjoyed my time with the novel.
The book was not what I expected with its description of "strange" and "uncanny visions" and it being tagged as horror on goodreads. That is mostly inaccurate. There are strange things that happen occasionally but they are easily interpretable as things a child on a big forest adventure might imagine. I kept thinking of the cartoon Rugrats, a gang of babies doing normal baby things but imagining them into big grand life-changing experiences. Because as a kid, they are.
The author really nailed the child perspective, noticing things that children notice in the way that children notice them (for example, a garden hose is given much attention and the nozzle is described as looking like an animal with its ears back). This was what I enjoyed most about the book, having to pay attention to things I would normally disregard and to see the world again through a child's eye. It was fun and refreshing and I really enjoyed my time with the novel.
June 6, 2025
I loved the foreword and first few chapters, with the kids POV and collective voice:
I know I'm probably being unfair, but eventually I was bothered by the cuteness, and the threatened darkness never established its presence fully. The first 30 or so pages were terrific though.
One time by accident one of the aunts slammed one of the cousins' hands in the car door and the cousin reported ex post facto that a flower had sprouted on the back of their hand, as big as a cabbage and the same color as their skin, which was bluey peach. They had watched it, they said, while they screamed, but later on it wasn't there anymore and someone had said it was a delusion, which was probably correct. That's what the wallpaper looked like: a delusion.
I know I'm probably being unfair, but eventually I was bothered by the cuteness, and the threatened darkness never established its presence fully. The first 30 or so pages were terrific though.
May 4, 2025
If you read House of Leaves, this is a shortened, yummy, 80s version. It was short and filled with horror and the ending is not what you expect. If you’re looking for a suspenseful, summer day, this is for you.
The narrator’s tone and diction were at times difficult to follow, I felt like I was reading an audio message that had been transcribed. But Bamford’s choice of organization of present and past chapters perfectly reflected what it was like to be a kid… how we thought as kids… how we were invincible as kids… and those summer days spent with cousins.
The narrator’s tone and diction were at times difficult to follow, I felt like I was reading an audio message that had been transcribed. But Bamford’s choice of organization of present and past chapters perfectly reflected what it was like to be a kid… how we thought as kids… how we were invincible as kids… and those summer days spent with cousins.
August 18, 2025
3.5 Oh what did I think of this? Full marks for nostalgia, detail, strangeness and the wonderful group perspective of all those cousins.
I got lost, along with them in this surreal trip, even if that was the point, it made the book harder to enjoy for me.
I got lost, along with them in this surreal trip, even if that was the point, it made the book harder to enjoy for me.
February 26, 2025
4.5. I already feel that this requires a reread. Beautifully written; dreamy yet authentic.
February 17, 2025
An interesting meditation on being both literally and figuratively lost.
The story tells of a group of cousins who have lost one of their own in the woods. Ignored by the adults in their lives and unsure of what has occurred, they decided to risk the unknown and search for answers themselves.
It’s a solid jumping off point for this style of fantasy, though it’s more of, again, a meditation than a truly narrative story. There’s a dreamlike quality to the narration that is intriguing and prettily done, but the woods, here a metaphor for danger and the unknown, feel like more of a fever dream than a menace.
While I’m open to this approach conceptually, fairy tale-style tellings do a better job of conveying the dangers of wandering into mysterious territory. Though there is real “danger” here; that’s more apparent in the reveal at the end than in the getting there.
This is told in first person plural, which is hard to pull off, and while it works better here than in most examples, the unidentified “we” narrating the story takes some of the air out of the story. This felt a little like a Lydia Millet novel, though admittedly less burdened with the kind of frustrating invention of fact that feels more like nonsense than fantasy.
It’s a short book and worth a read, though I think the writing holds a lot more value than the story.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
The story tells of a group of cousins who have lost one of their own in the woods. Ignored by the adults in their lives and unsure of what has occurred, they decided to risk the unknown and search for answers themselves.
It’s a solid jumping off point for this style of fantasy, though it’s more of, again, a meditation than a truly narrative story. There’s a dreamlike quality to the narration that is intriguing and prettily done, but the woods, here a metaphor for danger and the unknown, feel like more of a fever dream than a menace.
While I’m open to this approach conceptually, fairy tale-style tellings do a better job of conveying the dangers of wandering into mysterious territory. Though there is real “danger” here; that’s more apparent in the reveal at the end than in the getting there.
This is told in first person plural, which is hard to pull off, and while it works better here than in most examples, the unidentified “we” narrating the story takes some of the air out of the story. This felt a little like a Lydia Millet novel, though admittedly less burdened with the kind of frustrating invention of fact that feels more like nonsense than fantasy.
It’s a short book and worth a read, though I think the writing holds a lot more value than the story.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
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