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This is a literary fiction book mismarketed as horror. The author is definitely talented (and it‘s a debut!) but I just didn‘t connect with it. It‘s not something I would normally pick up but I found it to be highly readable.

This definitely has some of the hallmarks of a debut, but I really enjoyed it. Brashears digs deep into motivation and emotion, the things we cling to at our detriment and others', the things we avoid facing and the ripple effects of avoiding facing the things that need facing. At its essence, this feels like a coming-of-age novel. A little more bodily fluids than I prefer, but not distractingly more. I like novels focused on Appalachia.

While I didn't like this book as much as I had hoped, there were still some aspects I thought were brilliant.

House of Cotton is more of a character study focused on Magnolia than a gothic horror novel. She finds herself alone and without any money when her grandmother dies and what follows is her struggle to survive as a young woman in the South.

It's dark, gritty, and has some supernatural components with even more trigger warnings.

“The most traumatic events happen on the most insignificant days.”

Enjoying this one

In this gritty, ghostly Affrilachian gothic debut, Magnolia, in the wake of her grandmother‘s death and possibly pregnant, takes an offer to “model” as the late beloveds of the rich at a funeral home run by the strange Mr. Cotton. The voice and VIBES are all there, and this book has much to say about grief, death, race, class, and sex in the Bible Belt, but the plot was about as substantial as its ghosts and the ending was abrupt and unsatisfying.