Strange Folk

• Author: Alli Dyer
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: August 6, 2024
• Publisher: Atria Books

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Zakiya Jamal for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: self-harm/blood magic, blood, addiction, death, violence, neglect, statutory rape (off-page), murder, domestic violence, grief, mention of genocide, gore

A woman returns to her estranged, magical family in Appalachia but when a man is found dead in the woods nearby, it seems the family has conjured something sinister in this lush, shimmering, and wildly imaginative debut novel that is perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Deborah Harkness, and Sarah Addison Allen.

Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her new life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.

Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have summoned something dark.

As she and her family search for answers, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power in order to protect her family and the town she couldn’t leave behind.

I was really looking forward to this one, hoping for something along the lines of In the Shadow Garden by Liz Parker. I’m a huge fan of two of the comp authors listed in the plot summary, so this one seemed like it would be a perfect match for me. However, there were some things that I loved and some things that missed the mark during my read.

To start with, the author has a way with words. She writes gorgeous prose, and creates a wonderfully atmospheric setting where secrets and potential danger lurks around every corner. I found myself really enjoying the writing, and feeling as though I was transported to a whole new place through my reading. 

I was fascinated by the idea of a land-based system of magic, but I was really let down by how little it was explored in the story. The magic system isn’t explained in any way, and unfortunately works more as a system of vibes, where each person kind of has their own specific talent and can do ‘the work’ in whatever way they feel is most suitable. However, there don’t seem to be any rules associated with the magic system except for one, in which there is kind of a way around it, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a cost associated with how they are practicing it and the outcomes of their workings. We don’t even find out why it is this one family who can practice, and not others who have lived in the area for equally long periods of time. 

While the cost of magic isn’t really addressed, I couldn’t help but notice how there are some pretty serious themes that run through this family, and I honestly wasn’t expecting to see such dark content in the story, so a bit of warning would have been nice. The multiple generations of the family featured in this book struggle with a wide array of family dysfunctions, including domestic violence, alcoholism, drug use, and child neglect, and it made me wonder if this was the cost of the magic that they had been working. And one of the other major family dysfunctions was that characters seemed to make decisions for others in their lives, without talking to them about it, while becoming very upset when others did that to them and demonstrating little to no insight of their actions.

I really struggled with the characters in this one. The women in this story, especially the older generations, grew up poor in a rural area, and didn’t have easy lives. But they made the best of what they had, and tried to pass on the knowledge they gained to their daughters. But somehow that unbroken line of knowledge has become tangled, and is at risk. Belva has a lifetime of knowledge to pass on, and no one to pass it onto. Her daughter is basically lost to her, and has pushed her granddaughter, Lee, across the country. I understood why Lee would come back to her roots when she had nowhere to go, but it was shocking to me how much she changed as soon as she returned. Her parenting, her ability to remain responsible, and so much of her personality were altered dramatically by her return to Craw Valley, and it obviously affected her children and other family members. Belva was so headstrong, but at least she had a lifetime of experience behind it—although I was frustrated with her for repeating the same mistakes she had in the past. Don’t even get me started on Redbud, who did a terrible job as a family member to basically everyone, but then decided one day that she was going to be present whether they wanted her to or not. And last but not least, Meredith was only slightly more likable than Redbud. She lands in this hotbed of dysfunction and decides it’s the coolest place and she knows best. Even after she gets caught out there making bad choices and having to deal with the consequences, she continues to act like everyone else is dumb and she is the only one who knows anything. So she’s basically a know-it-all teenager, which isn’t an easy personality to like. 

The pacing on this one was kind of slow with periods of faster action popping up here and there. A lot of it felt repetitive, and reading similar passages from the perspective of the same characters over and over made the story drag a little, especially in the middle. There were two major plot lines in the story: the first one was kind of built up as if it was going to be the huge, defining storyline, but was resolved and then another storyline popped up that was much more intriguing and juicier, but it wound up being resolved rather quickly and easily, when I would have expected a little more depth to the resolution. I think the story would have been improved by going all in on one of the plots rather than dividing it up between two of them, and being able to devote more attention to a resolution that felt more realistic. 

Overall, this wasn’t a bad read, but it wasn’t a great read, either. I enjoyed the writing itself and the way that the author wove complex personalities throughout the story, although I might have preferred to read at least a couple of personalities that were more likable. The idea of a magic system that is tied to the land and accessible to the women who work closely with the land was intriguing, but I didn’t learn anywhere near enough about how the magic worked in this story. And while the storylines were interesting, I think the book could have been stronger with more focus being put into one storyline rather than divided into two. But the darker themes made this much more of a heavy read than I was anticipating, so don’t go into this expecting a story with hints of magical realism—this is full-on fantasy with serious undertones and family dynamics to explore. But if that and the content warnings don’t scare you off, this might be the read for you.

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