Overall Take:
Southern Gothic at its finest
Star Rating:
5 Stars
Genre:
Paranormal gothic fiction
Synopsis
Jemma is desperate to escape her life in Chicago, so when she gets an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family, she jumps on the opportunity.
When she arrives, the Duchon’s look down on her because of her skin tone. Then she finds out that they are under a curse, and they think that Jemma is the key to breaking it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the Duchon’s. Secrets going back over a century.
Thoughts:
I feel like for the past two weeks all I have read is holiday ARC’s so I needed a break and something a little more on tune with the spooky season reads, this book delivered
If I had to just some of this book with a line, it would be “it was all about the vibes”. The vibes were just so good. Books like this make me love the gothic genre. I am a sucker for it, and always chasing the high that books like this one give me. There is just something about it that I love so much.
This book had such a great plot, and it had a nice amount of history in it. I have read enough history to know stories similar to this book played out in real life (okay not some aspects – it is fiction) but if you’ve read any books dealing with colorism then it will be familiar to the themes that this book is built on. I think that this book did the history justice.
There are so many lies in this book, so much deception and on so many levels. Don’t hear gothic and think boring, this book is anything but and will keep you engaged and interested from the start.
Publication Date:
October 8, 2024
Author:
Del Sandeen
Page Length:
384 pages
Publisher:
Berkley Pub
Thank you to:
Thank you to @berkleypub and @netgalley for this e-arc. All thoughts are my own.
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