Rating: ★★★
Audience: Contemporary/Historical Mystery
Length: 384 pages
Author: Caroline George
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Release Date: October 10th, 2023
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

Blood holds all kinds of curses. Seven generations of women in Susana Prather’s family have been lost to the Georgia swamp behind her house. The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she awakens soaked with water, with no memory of sleepwalking. No matter how she tries to stop it, she’s pulled from her safe bed night after night, haunted by her own family history and legacy. Now, the truth feels it’s only a matter of time before she loses her mind and the swamp becomes her grave. Unless she can figure out how to break the curse. When she isn’t sleepwalking, she’s dreaming of her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Suzanna Yawn, who set the curse in motion in 1855. Her ancestor’s life bears such similarity to her own that it might hold the key she seeks. Or it might only foretell tragedy. As Susana seeks solutions in the past and the present, family members hold secrets tighter to their chests, friends grow distant, and old flames threaten to sputter and die. But Susana has something no one else has been able to the unflagging belief that all curses can be broken and that love can help a new future begin. Based on her own family history, award-winning novelist Caroline George’s latest novel is a staggeringly beautiful work of hope.

OH SO SLOW.

The themes in this book were really good. I liked the commentary surrounding trauma, grief and breaking generational barriers and cycles that are harming those present. When there was finally some communication, those conversations were great.

My issues are with the pacing. Good heavens I felt like this book never went anywhere. Every little bit was some progression but otherwise it was like I was reading this day in the life that I wasn’t all that interested in.

I don’t really have much else to say. This one just wasn’t for me and I’m not going to spend anymore time on it.

Overall audience notes:

• Mystery
• Language: a little
• Romance: kisses; low innuendo
• Violence: high
• Trigger/Content Warnings: lynching, loss of loved ones, racism, mental health struggles, mentions of teen pregnancy and rape

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