My Goodreads Fall Reading Challenge Review
by Caleb Hayes: “Puye Prophecy” by Gary G. Wise
My Rating: 5/5 Stars
Challenge Prompts: A Book That Haunts You / A Book With Mystical Elements
I have read many supernatural thrillers. This one is different. This one feels personal.
Kat Jackson is a 28-year-old Senior Project Manager. Control is her religion. Her boss forces a week off. Kat drives from Texas to Phoenix to see her sister. But Kat carries something inside her. Dormant DNA from her mother’s bloodline. It wakes. Big Crow with Little Feet steps through. Seven feet tall. Crumpled top hat. Grey braids with colored beads. Wood smoke trails behind him. He takes Kat. He shows her things she cannot prove. He gives her powers she never asked for.
My thought as I read: this book is about inheritance. Not just DNA. Not just spirits. It is about what we carry without knowing. What our mothers carried. What their mothers carried. What we pass on whether we want to or not. Kat vowed to remain childless. Then she discovers she is pregnant. That moment hit me hard.
The New Mexico setting breathes. The Puebloan cliff dwellings at Puye feel ancient and watching. The 1,064-mile drive becomes a 161-year fall through time. Wise writes with patience. He lets the dread build. He lets you feel the wood smoke in your throat.
Kat is not easy to love. She is sharp. Guarded. Determined. But that is why I rooted for her. She fights. She fights her fate. She fights Big Crow. She fights herself. Watching her surrender control felt like watching someone learn to breathe underwater.
The novel weaves road trip, historical mystery, supernatural horror, and family wounds. The Puye prophecy. The Duwit chonah mowna jawneek, the carrier of spirits. Evil spirits want it stopped. Kat must trust Big Crow. Trusting a ghost who abducted you is complicated. Their bond swings between intoxicating and terrifying.
For my challenge, I needed a book that haunts and a book with mystical elements. This gave me both. Ancient spirits. Sleeping DNA. A destiny spanning generations. Mysticism rooted in real history.
Puye Prophecy was my crowning read of the season. Atmospheric. Original. Deeply unsettling. This is the kind of book that reminds me why I love Goodreads. We find stories that shake us and we share them.
If you want a supernatural thriller that will stay with you, pick up Puye Prophecy right now. Let Big Crow pull you into a world you will not want to leave. Trust me, this one will haunt your thoughts for weeks. I am still thinking about it. I cannot stop.
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Puye Prophecy– bit.ly/44euZzV
Video Trailer – https://bit.ly/3JAantV
Puye Review by Jill Rey – https://bit.ly/4fPqa49
Goodreads Reviews – https://bit.ly/4rqIdTF
