Family | Book Chatter

House of Cotton
By Monica Brashears
Flatiron Books,9781250851932, April 2024, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

Raw and brutal.

The Rest of It:

One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home–where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. ~ From the publisher

This story will hit you with a closed fist. The author holds nothing back. Magnolia’s struggle to live has her doing things that at first won’t shock you, but then as the story plays out, I found her desperation to survive shockingly sad. The people she encounters never have her best interests at heart. No. And deep down she knows it, but her walk to freedom is alarming at times. So much so that I almost put the book down more than once.

This was chosen for my book club so I felt the need to finish it and it left me in a strange place. On the one hand, the writing is peppered with beautiful moments but the story is dark, very dark. Death and decay hang out at every turn and it’s pretty explicit.

There are moments though, that reveal Magnolia’s true heart, like her relationship with a homeless man and the many memories of her grandma that are shared throughout the story. Life in a funeral home is rough and when you choose to play a dead loved one, things can get a little dangerous. Not so much the action of it, but what it does to your psyche. When you are so fully immersed in death, how do you separate life from death?

I will be honest here, House of Cotton was a FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award and NPR’s BEST BOOK OF 2023, but it’s explicit in detail and might be a lot for someone not used to reading something so raw and ragged.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

One Big Happy Family
By Jamie Day
St. Martin’s Press,9781250283207, July 16, 2024, 368pp.

The Short of It:

A tense, closed door whodunit type of story. Rich family, loose morals, and lots of secrets.

The Rest of It:

You should know that this book will be released July 16, 2024 but I needed to write the review while it was fresh in my mind. This is a super fun read.

The Precipice is a legendary, family-owned hotel on the rocky coast of Maine. With the recent passing of their father, the Bishop sisters–Iris, Vicki, and Faith–have come for the weekend to claim it. But with a hurricane looming and each of the Bishop sisters harboring dangerous secrets, there’s murder in the air– and not everyone who checks into the Precipice will be checking out. ~ Publisher

The Precipice hotel has plenty of history. Not all of it good. After the death of their father, the Bishop sisters arrive to hear the reading of the will but this is not a tight-knit, close family. The three sisters have plenty of secrets and unchecked jealousy so for them to be shoved into a room during a dangerous storm that literally holds them hostage, the outcome cannot be good.

Enter the hotel’s staff. Charley is the housekeeper. A housekeeper who was very familiar with the previous owner and his unwelcomed advances. She’s not thrilled to be expecting the sisters. She’s heard plenty about them and guess what? They don’t really care to know or be around Charley either.

Charley has some issues. When the guests are plentiful at the hotel, she skims from them as much as she can to take care of her grandma, who is tucked away in assisted living. Yes, she steals for a good cause but when her loose morals commingle with that of the sisters a tug of war ensues. Plus, with all the guests gone, due to the storm, how will she earn the living she needs to earn to support her grandma?

No one can be trusted in this story! That’s what makes it so readable. Someone goes missing, then someone turns up dead. Secrets are revealed and that nasty storm keeps them all inside, with each other. Alliances are formed and broken. It’s a crazy story with a hectic pace.

Suspicion is everywhere and the finger is pointed this way, and then that way, keeping you guessing. There are a lot of red herrings and in the end I did figure it all out but it was fun getting there.

I read Day’s last book, The Block Party and it had the same relentless pace so I was sure to pick this one up. If you want something to help you through the week, pick up a copy. I pretty much read it straight through.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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