Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm so sorry. I tried to like this, and the premise is interesting. But I just could not get into it. I was slogging through even though the writing isn't confusing or anything like that. Hopefully I can revisit this when I'm more motivated.
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really wish authors (or directors) didn't include fat or obese people in their art just so they can denigrate and demean them over and over. I'm not going to provide spoilers, but I will say what happened in this book clearly shows the author's opinions of fat or obese people.
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
What was the point? A dual POV and timeline that brought nothing to the other story? Some traditions and mythology that seemed to be told at the very end by having an old lady ask our MC to recite the story for no good reason in the middle of a discussion, besides letting the reader know about the old folktales? Everyone on the rez is either poor, alcoholic, depressed or suicidal? I’m sorry to say but I think the book missed the point of what it was trying to convey.
The writing is bad. Not in its sentence construction or flow but in its pacing and a lot of telling and very little showing. The pacing is messy and all over the place. It’s unsure whether it wants to be fast paced with many (in the end insignificant) events happening or a very slow burn decent into paranormal and folklore. It seems like it struggles to find its own path and what it wants to be. A mystery? A horror? A contemporary fiction exploring rez life and traditions? It’s a bit lost in what it wants to show and ends up not showing anything.
It is also very unclear that there are two different timelines and you have to be very careful to pick it up early on or you’ll be completely lost. You have to calculate how long has gone by yourself and because neither character voice is very strong, they don’t seem like one another in the other timeline due to the 35 year gap in between the timelines which makes it hard to link those two. It I normal for a 5 year old to be different than when she is 40 (Noemi) but also because we only have her POV at 40 and Louie’s at 17 (in the past timeline) it makes things seem very unbalanced and weird. I would have preferred only following Louie in both timelines as we would have gotten to know him better and how all the events have impacted him rather than jumping back and forth. Especially that the present timeline didn’t bring anything to the story and was only about a third of the book and therefore the less important timeline which is a bit of an odd choice to have the present time be less important than the past. Usually flashbacks are there to explain current events not the opposite. Very odd narrative construction choice.
Unfortunately, the writing and pacing are not the only issues in this book. It impacts directly the characters depth and development. Because we only follow each character within their timeline we miss completely an opportunity to see growth or change. Even within the same timeline we’re told in a weird omniscient narrator way how other people feel or think but never our own characters thoughts and feelings, which is a lot of telling and definitely no showing. All the charterers are thrown at us in one go at the beginning and because they’re very similar and one dimensional, it is hard to differentiate people in the rez or even remember them. Even the two main characters, Louie and Noemi are almost the same when it comes to their POV and if one wasn’t a teen in the past while the other is an adult in the present timeline there would be no way of distinguishing who’s speaking.
The ending is plain ridiculous. We get an info dump of folklore, randomly told to us by some old ladies that have little to do with the plot and who decide out of nowhere to tell us why the ending makes sense and why it’s ok that weird things are happening. We could have had it integrated throughout the story and built it up to something more intricate but were told 3 different stories: one coyote, one alligator and one vampire tale, that have no meaning or bearing on the story and don’t link together at all to end up with a devil spirit story that is desperately trying to tie all the loose ends but it is too little too late and it seems to just be there as a deus ex machina Hail Mary to save the book. Which needless to say doesn’t work.
Overall, I can’t recommend it to anyone. It has Indigenous American rep which is good but I’m not sure that the way it was brought up was the best way. It also wanted to shed light on the high suicide and alcoholism rates in those communities but did it in a very on the nose and not very delicate way. It seemed to have just shown a very negative side of it all with little hope besides the epilogue which felt as if it came out of nowhere once again due to the missing character development throughout the book. I’m not sure this representation isn’t harmful but this isn’t for me to judge. As a book, it isn’t entertaining and it isn’t well written so I have nothing to really recommend.
The writing is bad. Not in its sentence construction or flow but in its pacing and a lot of telling and very little showing. The pacing is messy and all over the place. It’s unsure whether it wants to be fast paced with many (in the end insignificant) events happening or a very slow burn decent into paranormal and folklore. It seems like it struggles to find its own path and what it wants to be. A mystery? A horror? A contemporary fiction exploring rez life and traditions? It’s a bit lost in what it wants to show and ends up not showing anything.
It is also very unclear that there are two different timelines and you have to be very careful to pick it up early on or you’ll be completely lost. You have to calculate how long has gone by yourself and because neither character voice is very strong, they don’t seem like one another in the other timeline due to the 35 year gap in between the timelines which makes it hard to link those two. It I normal for a 5 year old to be different than when she is 40 (Noemi) but also because we only have her POV at 40 and Louie’s at 17 (in the past timeline) it makes things seem very unbalanced and weird. I would have preferred only following Louie in both timelines as we would have gotten to know him better and how all the events have impacted him rather than jumping back and forth. Especially that the present timeline didn’t bring anything to the story and was only about a third of the book and therefore the less important timeline which is a bit of an odd choice to have the present time be less important than the past. Usually flashbacks are there to explain current events not the opposite. Very odd narrative construction choice.
Unfortunately, the writing and pacing are not the only issues in this book. It impacts directly the characters depth and development. Because we only follow each character within their timeline we miss completely an opportunity to see growth or change. Even within the same timeline we’re told in a weird omniscient narrator way how other people feel or think but never our own characters thoughts and feelings, which is a lot of telling and definitely no showing. All the charterers are thrown at us in one go at the beginning and because they’re very similar and one dimensional, it is hard to differentiate people in the rez or even remember them. Even the two main characters, Louie and Noemi are almost the same when it comes to their POV and if one wasn’t a teen in the past while the other is an adult in the present timeline there would be no way of distinguishing who’s speaking.
The ending is plain ridiculous. We get an info dump of folklore, randomly told to us by some old ladies that have little to do with the plot and who decide out of nowhere to tell us why the ending makes sense and why it’s ok that weird things are happening. We could have had it integrated throughout the story and built it up to something more intricate but were told 3 different stories: one coyote, one alligator and one vampire tale, that have no meaning or bearing on the story and don’t link together at all to end up with a devil spirit story that is desperately trying to tie all the loose ends but it is too little too late and it seems to just be there as a deus ex machina Hail Mary to save the book. Which needless to say doesn’t work.
Overall, I can’t recommend it to anyone. It has Indigenous American rep which is good but I’m not sure that the way it was brought up was the best way. It also wanted to shed light on the high suicide and alcoholism rates in those communities but did it in a very on the nose and not very delicate way. It seemed to have just shown a very negative side of it all with little hope besides the epilogue which felt as if it came out of nowhere once again due to the missing character development throughout the book. I’m not sure this representation isn’t harmful but this isn’t for me to judge. As a book, it isn’t entertaining and it isn’t well written so I have nothing to really recommend.
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I will start by saying, I am a Native person who always strives to support fellow Natives and I wanted to like this book. As you can see by my rating, it didn’t live up to my expectations.
Readers follow two characters, Noemi and her Uncle Louie. The chapters are divided between their perspectives, which take place during different times. Truthfully, it took me a long time to realize this. Eventually their timelines come together as they begin looking into Noemi’s boyfriend’s suicide.
The way in which Medina describes alcoholism, suicide, self-harm, addiction, obesity, and harm to animals made me feel more uncomfortable than the real “horror/creepy” portions of the novel. Coming from the perspective of a Native and knowing those are things we, unfortunately, encounter in our home communities, it would make sense for how I felt to be the point.
I do appreciate the focus on the coyote stories in chapter 46. Growing up, Native peoples from specific tribes hear the stories about Coyote and Iktomi the spider. Reflecting on that chapter, there are several moments within this book that point back to some of those stories. Seeing as this comes from several Native cultures, it may be lost on non-Native audiences. Being Native myself, that is one aspect I enjoyed about this novel.
Overall, this novel felt choppy: a slow burn that rarely gains traction... similarly to someone learning to drive a manual transmission and struggling to pull out of first gear. I was close to adding it to my DNF pile. However, I wanted to give it a chance by finishing it.
I greatly prefer Medina’s short story in “Never Whistle At Night”.
Side note: I am not a fan of the audiobook. I had to stop listening to it after the first few chapters. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Gary Farmer. But his strength is not audiobooks. His inflections do not match the punctuation. This made it particularly difficult to follow the story.
Readers follow two characters, Noemi and her Uncle Louie. The chapters are divided between their perspectives, which take place during different times. Truthfully, it took me a long time to realize this. Eventually their timelines come together as they begin looking into Noemi’s boyfriend’s suicide.
The way in which Medina describes alcoholism, suicide, self-harm, addiction, obesity, and harm to animals made me feel more uncomfortable than the real “horror/creepy” portions of the novel. Coming from the perspective of a Native and knowing those are things we, unfortunately, encounter in our home communities, it would make sense for how I felt to be the point.
I do appreciate the focus on the coyote stories in chapter 46. Growing up, Native peoples from specific tribes hear the stories about Coyote and Iktomi the spider. Reflecting on that chapter, there are several moments within this book that point back to some of those stories. Seeing as this comes from several Native cultures, it may be lost on non-Native audiences. Being Native myself, that is one aspect I enjoyed about this novel.
Overall, this novel felt choppy: a slow burn that rarely gains traction... similarly to someone learning to drive a manual transmission and struggling to pull out of first gear. I was close to adding it to my DNF pile. However, I wanted to give it a chance by finishing it.
I greatly prefer Medina’s short story in “Never Whistle At Night”.
Side note: I am not a fan of the audiobook. I had to stop listening to it after the first few chapters. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Gary Farmer. But his strength is not audiobooks. His inflections do not match the punctuation. This made it particularly difficult to follow the story.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a tough read, with some very dark moments. At the same time it was a great story and really fits into the Indigenous horror genre. There were also some good twists that kept me guessing. Check the TW's before diving in.
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Compelling read, there are mysteries so there is a definite plot but the book is really more about the characters and family relationships and traumas. Also partly about the trauma of Native Americans. Magical realism. Themes of alcoholism and mental illness. I don't want to say I enjoyed it because that would make me sound like a sociopath but I liked both main characters and wanted things to work out for them and the book is well executed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol
Moderate: Mental illness