I read this book and I wish I hadn’t because it made me sick. For southern gothic horror fans, this might be exactly what you want but for anyone else, it might not be for you.
Check ALL of the trigger warnings because I didn’t and that was a mistake. I usually check every single one in the detail page in StoryGraph but not this one. For some reason, I only looked at the main page content warnings and thought it would be fine but then when I clicked into the detail afterwards, this is never something I would have picked up.
The contents are truly horrifying. Proceed with caution.
That being said, setting aside my personal preferences for content I avoid, this book is incredibly well written and edited. The writing runs and runs and runs in the best way. It’s descriptive and immersive. It’s flowery and beautiful. It’s varied and not repetetive at all. And it keeps you glued to the page.
It follows a woman escaping her abusive mother, finding respite in a haunted house in the middle of the woods and coming across a new potential friend. But as it goes, her new friend may not be as she seems…
Bullet points:
- southern gothic horror
- sisterhood, mother-daughter relationships
- escaping abuse and creating a new life
- monsters and monstrous behaviors
- queerness and homophobia
- how bystanders enable harm
- horrors of monstrous parents
This book made me sick, then settled a bit, then sick again, and finally at the end found a resolution that left me still somewhat unsettled but a bit less nauseous than before.
It explores the horrors inflicted upon a trio of sisters and how violence perpetuates generationally and innocents suffer at the hands of monsters, who then may become monsters themselves. How others stand by and watch while monsters inflict violence on others instead of stepping in to stop it and how lives could have been changed but weren’t because some looked the other way.
While most of the book, my stomach was in knots, there are rare moments of joy and peace. I loved the moments of tenuous peace Jude finds at the farmhouse in the woods by herself. There are other moments she has that aren’t horrifying but to say those would be spoilers so I’ll leave it there for this review.
Here is where I have to admit though that I skipped some of the explicit content in this book so cannot comment on exactly what happened between Jude and Nemoira at points later in the story. From the brief glimpses of words on page as I breezed through, it sounded raw, visceral, and disturbing but welcomed?
I can’t recommend this for the content that’s within, nor can I use the word good/great to describe this book since it’s a bit misleading and highly subjective. However, if you want to read something impactful and beautifully written, and you can stomach horror enough to read through, this is one to pick up this year and you won’t be dissapointed…
