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A review by ruthsic
The Memory Trees by Kali Wallace
3.0
Because I had loved the author's [b:Shallow Graves|22663629|Shallow Graves|Kali Wallace|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434989166s/22663629.jpg|42162445] which debuted last year, I was pretty optimistic about this one. The Memory Trees is written like a mystery with a few supernatural elements. Basically, the story is about two very old families that were present at the first white settlements in the town, and their complicated history throughout that has manifested in a tragedy with Sorrow's generation. The build-up in the book is very slow, and it took me days to just get into it - most of it was about day to day in the town when Sorrow comes back, and her fragile relationship with her maternal family which she is working to restore while trying to remember the events of the night of her sister's death. There are also some flashbacks with some other ancestors to emphasize the life of this family in their town, especially because they are matrilineal and have been since their first ancestor, Rejoice came to live in it.
The problem with The Memory Trees is that it gets too lost in the atmosphere and only occasionally returns to the plot to progress it. It is not even about character development - it just feels like it is trying to establish the setting of the book. And for a person like me, who prefers the setting work towards the plot instead of the reverse, I was, in a word, bored. The actual exciting elements did not arrive until, like, the last third of the book, so until then you are just hanging around wondering what happened that night. The story is pretty good, and I loved the details that went into constructing the characters of each era, but it is mostly drifting in the book. Each of the women in the flashbacks faced challenges, primarily because they were women and tied to their family. That is their shared legacy - that they would always be considered witches by the townspeople, and they would always feel a part of their lands. The supernatural element is very subtle and I think it hardly matters to the plot. Eventually, superfluous writing kept me from fully enjoying the story.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Katherine Tegen Books, via Edelweiss.
The problem with The Memory Trees is that it gets too lost in the atmosphere and only occasionally returns to the plot to progress it. It is not even about character development - it just feels like it is trying to establish the setting of the book. And for a person like me, who prefers the setting work towards the plot instead of the reverse, I was, in a word, bored. The actual exciting elements did not arrive until, like, the last third of the book, so until then you are just hanging around wondering what happened that night. The story is pretty good, and I loved the details that went into constructing the characters of each era, but it is mostly drifting in the book. Each of the women in the flashbacks faced challenges, primarily because they were women and tied to their family. That is their shared legacy - that they would always be considered witches by the townspeople, and they would always feel a part of their lands. The supernatural element is very subtle and I think it hardly matters to the plot. Eventually, superfluous writing kept me from fully enjoying the story.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Katherine Tegen Books, via Edelweiss.