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A review by kenzieburns
The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Good book for a random library grab! I enjoyed Matilda's perspective much more than Ada's, though. I really found Ada quite annoying and useless for most of the book until the very end really when she killed Frank but I think that was kind of the point/really allowed for her to have a good amount of character development.
This was very solidly average for me, hence the 3 star rating. I don't feel that the plot lines were tied together as well as I would have liked. For example, I really thought Frank would be the ones to kill Matilda/her family, not Virgil. Don't get me wrong, Virgil is VILE, but he set their house on fire for such a mundane reason. Then again, his whole character was always super volatile... I did think the setting was very well written, though, and I liked the author's note at the end about how she hoped that the Trace had come through as a character of it's own. It kind of did, but I still think some of the descriptions could have been more vivid and there could have been more events specific to the Trace that affected the characters/plot to really drive home the message.
I'm a bit confused on why the author chose to make the girls so young, but then basically treated them like adults from the begining. Like, it was occasionally explicitly stated that they were both "just kids," but neither Ada or Matilda really had sweeping character arcs that took them from naive child to full adult, they were both always part way there due to their circumstances (Matilda being the child of sharecroppers and Black in the Deep South and Ada growing up in a terribly abusive home). Like, I think Ada kind of had some of what that growth could be, but she was already so "grown up" from having to survive Virgil's abuse growing up, so it wasn't as pronounced as it could have been. Idk, the age just felt like it should have been more of a factor.
This was very solidly average for me, hence the 3 star rating. I don't feel that the plot lines were tied together as well as I would have liked.
I'm a bit confused on why the author chose to make the girls so young, but then basically treated them like adults from the begining. Like, it was occasionally explicitly stated that they were both "just kids," but neither Ada or Matilda really had sweeping character arcs that took them from naive child to full adult, they were both always part way there due to their circumstances (Matilda being the child of sharecroppers and Black in the Deep South and Ada growing up in a terribly abusive home). Like, I think Ada kind of had some of what that growth could be, but she was already so "grown up" from having to survive Virgil's abuse growing up, so it wasn't as pronounced as it could have been. Idk, the age just felt like it should have been more of a factor.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Racial slurs, and Racism