A review by coralinejones
House of Cotton by Monica Brashears

3.0

Unfortunately I can only explain my thoughts through a pros / cons list. So alas:

Pros:

• Beautiful prose.
• The author has a very poetic writing style that keeps you engaged and wanting more.
• The way she writes about Magnolia's environment keeps you hooked and feeling like you're standing right there with her as the story unfolds. You can literally state the American South on these pages.
• Some scenes are written so well it keeps you turning the page until it ends.

Cons:

• The story felt all over the place. On one of the bad pages, one scene would happen just to unfold into a mess of sporadic thoughts and ideas.
• There's NO horror here. This reads more like a literary novel that deals with grief, racism, and capitalism more than anything else... And while those topics are horrific it didn't translate as a horror novel in any regard. I think this novel suffers from mischaracterization. Had this been properly listed I think my expectations would've been different and thus my rating would be different.
• The entire time the prose and the plot leaves you assuming something horror-esq would happen but it never comes.
• The book is too sexual for my taste. I get the point but the gratuitous sex and rape eventually tired me out and I skipped those scenes.
• Eventually this dragged on towards the end and I couldn't wait for it to end.

I would read what else this author has to offer in the future. I think if she tightens her ideas she can have something exceptional and solid.