Title: The Girls in the Stilt House

Author: Kelly Mustian

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark 2021

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 384

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don't Rise.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.

Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.

As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

For me, this was a very middle of the road book. I liked some things, overall, I had to force myself to read it. Looking at the good, I loved the descriptions. I really felt like Mustian placed us into the swamp with its sights, sounds, and smells. I was very creeped out by the creepy crawlies in the swamp. Good job on those descriptions. I was very into those. But then we get to the actual story line and characters Everything was a little too depressing for me. I’m not a huge fan of books where every new situation and decision leads to more and more bad things. I need a bit more hope and escapism in my books. I don’t particularly like books that make me feel so terrible (unless it’s an interesting nonfiction book). Morgan was an interesting character, but Ada annoyed me many times throughout the book. For growing up in the swamp, she often seemed like she didn’t know how to survive in the swamp. Very odd and not believable. Overall, this was not the book for me, but it wasn’t terrible. Just a very lackluster read.

Next up on the TBR pile: