The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree by India Hayford

 

Hello my lovely readers! Whew, what a read. Let's just get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, working in a Louisiana circus and as a hootchy kootch dancer in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.

Disguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, Genevieve intends only to visit briefly and leave. But a chance meeting with a guilt-ridden young Vietnam veteran draws her into more unexpected connections. Her hard-won independence inspires an abused woman and her daughters to find their own path to empowerment, and a hypocritical preacher is brought to a long-deserved reckoning.

With undertones of magical realism and dark humor, here is a powerful story of discovering—and sometimes rediscovering—one’s place in the world, and the unexpected challenges and gifts that present themselves along the way.

QUICK REVIEWS pt XVII

Hello my lovely readers! More quick reviews?? Yup! 

Little Faith by Nickolas Butler
A Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when their adopted daughter falls under the influence of a radical church.

*This was alright. I liked that this featured an elderly narrator, but the story fell short for me. I wanted a bit more drama. 3 out of 5 stars.

Every Story is a Love Story by Imobolo Mbue
Three years ago, Wolo’s pregnant wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future: the twins they were expecting, the PhD she was on the cusp of finishing, and the house they’d just bought in New Jersey. Now the woman who killed his wife comes to Wolo asking for forgiveness.

*Sigh. I enjoyed Mbue's last novel Behold the Dreamer but I felt it could've done without a certain storyline with the wife. I felt the same way with this book. A rape storyline and a romance angle? Meh. Mbue is a solid writer, but this novel disappointed me. 3 out 5 stars.

Rattlebone by Maxine Clair

 

Hello my lovely readers! Another PHENOMENAL read this month. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Irene Wilson knows that a “no-name invisible something” has settled over her parents’ marriage and suspects her glamorous new teacher is to blame. Irene is not alone in her suspicions. In the town of Rattlebone, a small Black neighborhood of Kansas City, secrets are hard to keep and growing up is a community affair.

As Irene is initiated into adult passion and loss, her family story takes its place in a tightly woven tapestry of neighbors whose griefs and joys are as vivid as her own. Capturing an entire world through the eyes of its unforgettable heroine, Rattlebone is a one-of-a-kind triumph of American fiction.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

 

Hello my lovely readers! After a rough August, I'm finally coming out of the fog and reading more! Funny that even in a "low" reading month, I was still able to get through eight books LOL Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

QUICK REVIEWS pt. XI

Hello my lovely readers! It's time to get into some quick reviews!

Hell Put to Shame by Earl Swift
A gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921 - a crime which exposed for the nation the existence of the “peonage system,” a form of legal enslavement established after the Civil War across the American South.

*Great bit of unknown history! Sad and tragic, often are most things regarding Black folks in the South during this time, but a very enlightening read nonetheless. 4 out of 5 stars.

The Metamorphosis
It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man.

*This was a re-read from high school! Still a fascinating novella that holds up really well for being written in 1915! 5 out of 5 stars

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit

Hello my lovely readers! Another day, another re-read. Let's get into it. 

SYNOPSIS
What if you could live forever? In this timeless story young Winnie Foster learns of a hidden spring in a nearby wood and meets the Tuck family, whose members reveal their astonishing discovery of the spring’s life-changing power. Now Winnie must decide what to do with her newfound knowledge—and the Tucks must decide what to do with her. But it’s not just the curious girl who is interested in their remarkable tale. A suspicious stranger is also searching for the Tucks, and he will stop at nothing until he finds them and uncovers their secret.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Hello my lovely readers! Re-reading this as an adult made me fall in love with this book. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into ten languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

QUICK REVIEWS PT. VIII

Hello my lovely readers! It's time for another round of quick reviews! Let's get into it.

Good People by Patmeena Sabit
The Sharaf family achieved the "American dream." The Afghan refugee family moved to the U.S. raised their children and became wealthy and successful. But then their teenage daughter Zorah brought shame upon their family, resulting in a tragedy. But what really happened? It depends on who you ask.

*I loved this book! It was incredibly original in how Sabit chose to tell their story solely through interviews with friends, co-workers and other members of the community. I listened to this on audio and the full cast was AMAZING. Also, I love an ambiguous ending. 5 out of 5 stars.

Inharmonious by Tammye Huf
When three young Black men enlist in the US Army hoping to serve their country with honor during World War II, their lives are forever changed. Lee, Benny, Roscoe have been friends for ever but the war forces them to do things they wouldn't dream of doing. Benny begins to pass as white. Roscoe marries Benny's sister, Cora, but is unhappy. And Lee, who always loved Cora betrays her and must forgive out how to get back in her life. Based off their decisions, they must all navigate a new sense of self.

*Meh. It was entertaining enough, but it felt uneven. It felt like a majority of this book was about the love triangle between Roscoe, Lee and Cora. I would've appreciated more insight on Benny's passing as well as Roscoe's life with Megan. Oh well. 3 out of 5 stars.

Zeal by Morgan Jerkins

Hello my lovely readers! Sigh. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .

Natchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war’s end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen’s Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who’s determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her.

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at the Freedmen’s School, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.

Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family’s history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?

Native Son by Richard Wright

Hello my lovely readers! I can't believe it's been 20 years since I last read this book! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin

 Hello my lovely readers! This book was a doozy. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.

Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from memory: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.

Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

Hello my lovely readers! This was a re-read for me and part of my 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge. I started this book December 28, 2025 and I'm just now finishing it. Woof. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring by Richard Gergel

Hello my lovely readers!

This was a book I randomly found while perusing my local library. I'm so glad I found it. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver's disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.

President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his commission's recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces. An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his "baptism of fire," and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring's language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.

Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage by Heather Ann Thompson

 

Hello my lovely readers! This book...whew! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

On December 22, 1984, white New Yorker Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers at point-blank in a New York City subway car. Goetz slipped into the subway tunnels undetected, fleeing the city to evade capture. From the moment Goetz turned himself in, the narrative surrounding the shooting became a matter of extraordinary debate, igniting public outcry and capturing the attention of the nation.

While Goetz's guilt was never in question, media outlets sensationalized the event, redirecting public ire toward the victims themselves. In the end, it would take two grand juries and a civil suit to achieve justice on behalf of the four Black teenagers. For some, Goetz would go on to become a national hero, inciting a disturbing new chapter in American history. This brutal act revealed a white rage and resentment much deeper, larger, and more insidious than the actions of Bernie Goetz himself. Intensified by politicians and tabloid media, it would lead a stunning number of white Americans to celebrate vigilantism as a fully legitimate means for addressing racial fear, fracturing American race relations.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Hello my lovely readers! 

When I tell you, I STRUGGLED to get through this book...let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate Eric Lichtblau

Hello my lovely readers!

This book didn't work for me. Shame. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

One night in early 2018, while he was home from college, an Ivy League student named Blaze Bernstein snuck out of his parents’ house in Orange County. Waiting for him in a car outside was an old high-school classmate: Sam Woodward, someone who Blaze mostly remembered as a brooding, bigoted loner. But that night, after months of flirtatious messaging, Sam had succeeded in coaxing Blaze—a gay, Jewish sophomore at UPenn—out for a rendezvous. No one would ever see him alive again.

In American Reich, veteran investigative journalist Eric Lichtblau uses the story of Blaze’s life and death to shine a light on the epidemic of hate in Southern California and, increasingly, the nation as a whole. Orange County has long been a bastion of the ultra-right: carved out of farmland as a haven for wealthy whites fleeing the diversifying metropolis to the north, it was the birthplace of the far-right John Birch Society, a hub for neo-Nazi recruitment, and a powerful springboard for race-baiting Republican politicians including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But in the years leading up to Blaze’s disappearance, Orange County was changing: like the country as a whole, it was rapidly diversifying, to the outrage of many of its white residents. No one was more opposed to the changes than America’s resurgent neo-Nazi groups, one of which had recently gained a new member: Sam Woodward.

Revealing how Orange County has exported racial hatred to the rest of the country and the world, American Reich weaves this tragic tale together with stories from across the nation, showing what this haunted place and the colliding paths of two of its residents reveal about America's fractured soul and our hope for healing.

Black Soldiers, White Laws: The Tragedy of the 24th Infantry in 1917 Houston by John A. Haymond

Hello my lovely readers! 

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. It's about time that I dip my toe into more military history. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
On the sweltering, rainy night of August 23, 1917, one of the most consequential events affecting America’s long legacy of racism and injustice began in Houston, Texas. Inflamed by a rumor that a white mob was arming to attack their cantonment, and by regular police harassment in the preceding weeks, more than 100 African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, took their weapons and marched into the largely Black San Felipe district of the city. A violent confrontation with police and civilians ensued and nineteen lives were lost.

The Army took charge, conducting a court-martial of the 118 soldiers on charges of mutiny and murder. Inadequately defended en masse by only one lawyer inexperienced in capital cases, undermined by perjured testimony and clear racial bias, and confronted by an all-white tribunal committed to a rapid judgment, sixty-four Black soldiers were found guilty. And in the predawn darkness of December 11th, thirteen of them were hanged at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio—extra-legally and in secret, violating even the Army’s own regulations. The largest mass execution in the Army’s history outraged the country and inspired preventive legislation, and yet six more Black soldiers were executed in early 1918 and dozens more sentenced to life in prison.

The Houston Incident, as it became known, has remained largely untold, a deep stain on the Army’s record and pride. Award-winning historian and Army veteran John Haymond has spent eight years researching the events surrounding the Incident and engaging in efforts that ultimately led, in December 2023, to overturning the verdicts and awarding honorary discharges to all the soldiers involved. His dramatic chronicle of what transpired, situated amongst the rampant racism in Texas and the country, is a crucially important and harrowing reminder of our racially violent past, offering the promise that justice, even posthumously, can prevail.

QUICK REVIEWS pt. V

Hello my lovely readers! It's time for another round of Quick Reviews! 

We Don't Talk about Carol by Kristen L. Berry
A dedicated journalist unearths a generations-old family secret—and a connection to a string of missing girls that hits way too close to home.

*This was a great debut! A little long and the author definitely could've cut half of the fertility plot out, but enjoyable nonetheless. I'm glad there's finally a book out that addresses the plight of missing Black girls. 4 out of 5 stars

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
In June 1975, the Taylor family shatters when two out of their three teenagers are found dead. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the rumors that he was the one who killed them. Now, decades later, his daughter, Olivia, comes back to serve as his ghostwriter for his last book and uncover the truth of what happened that night.

*Decent read. Not terrible, not great. Pretty average. 3 out of 5 stars

Hometown Betrayal by Emily Benedek

Hello my lovely readers! It's been a while. Unfortunately, I had some health issues shortly after my last review and I just couldn't handle writing reviews.

I have read a lot of books though, but they were all...meh. Stay tuned for another "Quick Reviews!"

Now let's get into this book!

SYNOPSIS
No one believed it could happen in their town.

Valarie Clark Miller seemed to have it all. Smart, beautiful, and athletic, with a wealthy, successful husband and growing family, Valarie appeared to be the picture-perfect Mormon wife. But it was all a façade. Inside, she was crumbling from the pressures of long-repressed memories of a childhood plagued with sexual and physical abuse.

In Hometown Betrayal, author Emily Benedek brings you behind the closed doors of the remote Mormon community of Clarkston, Utah. With the help of hundreds of individual stories, she pieces together not only what happened to Valarie, but also the conditions and culture that allowed it. Hometown Betrayal culminates in an account of the Miller family’s fight to hold accountable the men—including the local cop-- who abused Valarie and controlled the systems designed to look the other way.

The Most by Jessica Anthony

 

Hello my lovely readers! This was a quick read. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Kathleen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly handsome life insurance salesman husband, Virgil, or their two young boys, at church. Instead, she takes a dip in the kidney-shaped swimming pool of their apartment complex. And then she won’t come out.

A consuming, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, THE MOST breaches the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, Kathleen and Virgil hurtle towards each other until they arrive at a reckoning that will either shatter their marriage, or transform it, at last, into something real.