I just loved reading this book! I love Elle Cosimano's books, and I had forgotten I'd gotten this book, and so hadn't connected it to this author whose books I loved. But I found it, and I read it and I loved it, it was such a great read!

The whole set up sounded really intriguing, with someone coming back from the grave, and family history secrets, I had to know what was going on, it was such a fantastic mystery and was written in a way that I had to keep reading!

Honestly, the synopsis had me going back and forth on who was the bad guy. The way things were said made me think one thing, then another. I just wanted to get down to the bottom of the mystery about what was going on with the Slaughter family, and with Nathaniel, in the past and in the present.

This book deals with a lot of heavy topics, from indentured slavery to the cutting, both of which are pretty important to the plot, of Nathaniel's past, to the fact that her blood brought him back. I can't speak to how good of representation there was, but it was good to have, if only to raise discussion about them, which is needed.

Loved reading this book and I can't wait to read more by Elle Cosimano!

Sadly this book was archived before I could download to read it. It has been added to my TBR and I’ll keep an eye out for it again in the future or at my local library.

The book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention.

This book neded some kind of trigger warning. Some of the topics in this story whee tough to get through. The title is The Suffering Tree but it doesnt need to brign the readers that suffering, just have them empathize with it I feel that this story was a bit too much.

This was just an okay read for me. I disliked as many things as I liked and didn't feel strongly enough about the book to really warrant adding an in-depth review to the blog.

This is really beautifully atmospheric, full of vivid description. It really puts the reader there. The world building and setting is very real. I do think the shift in perspectives are a little jarring. If they were smoother, it'd be a solid piece!

This whole mission to get my Netgalley to queue zero has really highlighted how my tastes have evolved and changed over time with book blogging. The Suffering Tree by Elle Cosimano is a book I would have been all over three years ago. Now, however, I enjoyed it but it wasn't a new favorite. I do not see myself re-reading this book. Looking back, I kind of wish I had read this one during the fall because it sure is evocative of autumn - moodwise, not so much season-wise.

The Suffering Tree follows Tori who is moving from DC to Chaptico Maryland with her mother and brother, following the death of her father. Tori self harms and during one instance of self harm, she ends up raising the dead. In this case, a young man by the name of Nathaniel who was an indentured servant for the Slaughter family. Basically, the Slaughter family is angry because Tori's family inherited 20 acres in the middle of their property as well as Al Slaughter's house. They don't know why Tori's family inherited and are determined to reverse it.

One child, Will Slaughter, goes missing. And Nathaniel, that dead young man that Tori happened to raise, is under suspicion. What drives the book is Tori looking for the reason why her family inherited the land and the house. Also, Tori trying to figure out how she is connected to the Chaptico witch, Emmeline. The story is thrilling and at times has a lot of action. There's also flashbacks to the past through Nathaniel's point of view and Emmeline's point of view. Those were the best parts and gave me grown up Hocus Pocus vibes.

Overall, The Suffering Tree is not a book I find myself regretting. It is a good read for the lead up to Halloween, not so much for the lead up to Valentine's Day. I didn't really connect with any of the characters. However, the setting and mystery make for threads of interest that kept me reading.

The synopsis interested me but then I realized this book talked heavily about self-harm and that topic alone is very triggering. I couldn't get into this book as much as I wanted to.

This was a bit of a creepy read and I really enjoyed it. I feel like it was a bit more contemporary than I would have liked, but the plot was wonderful and original. I liked the characters, the mystery, the plot twists, and just how the story played out. I don't know what I expected from this book, but it was not what I got.

If you are triggered by self-harm, do not read this book or proceed with caution. This is a very good, well-researched supernatural-ish YA thriller. I found myself vested in the characters and what happened in both the past and present but some parts felt rushed and incomplete -specifically the end- but I like her writing and her books are kind of their own genre which is cool. Not the best book but I do recommend.

I wanted to like this novel but the writing was kind of slow and the characters were uneven. The parts written in the past were more compelling and had greater suspense than the present, I think the mystery was a good one and held my interests and the present day plot was a bit weak with the fire and the prom.

This was one disturbing story. The girl is a cutter. She slashes her arm pretty good at the beginning of the story and blood drips down onto a grave which brings back to life a handsome young man who crawls out of the grave by using her arm to pull himself out. Lovely. No thanks. YAs have enough issues without making them think cutting is a solution to their suffering and -HEY!- why not do it in a grave yard and maybe get a cool guy!. Not one I put on a shelf, but YAs will likely find it and enjoy it. Its a historical romance , I think....

This book was set up for greatness, but it fell short in every way imaginable. I can understand how someone could enjoy this, but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title. Unfortunately, I have lost interest in the title, partly due to trusted reviews, and will not be reviewing the title. I have, however, promoed the title through my weekly recap with links to Amazon. Thank you again, and I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

The Suffering Tree was a compelling novel that combined historical fact with magic and horror. Tori digs up Nathaniel, a young indentured servant who died centuries ago, from beneath a tree on the property her family has recently inherited. This unleashes an ancient curse on Tori's family and their neighbors, and it will take everything to right the wrongs of the past.

Such an interesting concept. Totally something I'd recommend to my students.

'The Suffering Tree' is definitely a book that has left me trying to figure out how I feel about it, how I should rate it, and how to even review it. I don't get many of these types of books, mainly because I would shy away from reading them to begin with. This obviously wasn't the case here, so...yeah. I'm going to do my best to be coherent and hopefully you can decide for yourselves if you want to pick this one up or not.

I have a few qualms with the description itself, without even starting the book. I've read several other reviews for this one, and I have to agree with them on this point. The description NEEDS to have a trigger warning or at least mention that there is major self-harm. This is a huge aspect of the book and of the main character - and it's not even mentioned in the description. If I had known about it, I probably would have still read the book - but I would've been aware of the situation and prepared for it. It hit me like a train right at the very beginning and only got worse throughout. The main character, Tori, is a cutter. She suffers from anxiety and uses cutting as a coping mechanism. Fine - it happens and I actually respect that you included it the way it was. But again - no mention whatsoever beforehand. It's a big deal in the story and a big deal for the reader. At least put this in the description or something so people know going in.

The other issue with the description was that it picked out the most interesting points of the story, but left out what the majority of the book was actually about. Again - I probably would've picked this up anyways, but at least let me know what the actual book is about and not just unfair teasers.

After that small rant, I can honestly say that the story had a ton of potential. It just didn't quite make it. I was so excited to read this book after reading the description - but like I said, it didn't match up and I was kinda disappointed. Tori was a good main character - realistic because of her issues with not fitting where she just moved, feeling left out/like she doesn't belong, anxiety problems, and even the cutting. The plot was interesting because it did have a lot of mystery - mostly centered in the past, but still pretty great. I liked figuring out what really happened back then to Emmeline and Nathaniel. It was a fantastic premise, but didn't quite follow through with the promised amount of magic and paranormal aspects. Lastly, I want to touch on the writing style. This was interesting and well done, in my opinion. There are three different POVs - Tori in the present time, Nathaniel recounting his past, and Tori's visions/nightmares through Emmeline's eyes. I loved that the author chose to do multiple POVs and that she chose these character's for narrators. One thing that bothered me was that Nathaniel and Emmeline's narratives are done in the first person, but Tori's is from the third person. Why? I really believe that if Tori's part was done in the first person, I would have connected with her better and would've had a better experience with the story. It's a shame that something like this could make or break a book for me, but I think it did. This is a big point of interest for me with every novel I read, and it just didn't completely work for me this time.

So, that's kind of it in a nutshell. These are all my own opinions and obviously don't reflect how other readers will feel. I hope that it gives you a heads up before deciding if it's for you or not. I'm giving it three stars because the main aspects (writing, plot, characters, etc.) were well done, but I can't get past the issues I mentioned above. I really wanted to love this one, but again - it just didn't happen for me.

I am giving “The Suffering Tree” three stars for the sole reason that it had some promise. 2 1/2 would be my preference and 2 seems too low, so I rounded up.

As I said above, there was some promise in the plot and characters. They were actually developed fairly well and the concept was unique. The problem is, none of it was capitalized on. It felt plodding with brief moments of hope, only to have them almost immediately dashed. And I would be remiss if I neglected to mention this: There is self-harm (cutting) and it is very graphic. If this is a trigger for you then avoid this book at all costs.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend “The Suffering Tree.”

When Tori Burns’ family is contacted shortly after her father’s death about a house and some land that was left to them in Chaptico, Maryland, they are suddenly moving into a century home. So begins the uncovering of the mysterious circumstances that lead to Tori’s family owning a small parcel of land on the historic Slaughter farm. The move kicks off many unexplainable happenings that seem to all come back to a witch’s curse from 300 years ago. Elle Cosimano strives to connect the present of the Slaughter land with a darker past, with little success overall.
The Suffering Tree (2017) is one part historical fantasy, one part adolescent romance, and two parts mystery. Tori is a teen navigating a new community, the grief of losing her father, and her personal demons. Often when Tori gets overwhelmed with what’s going on around her she self-harms, the descriptions of which are often graphic. Her struggle with her mental health that sometimes becomes physical harm is something the book is opened with but then is never resolved fully. For something as graphic as self-harm to be not only an opening scene but an ongoing fear of the main character, I expected more constructive discussion about her mental health and eventually, her management of her self-harm. Unfortunately, no such journey occurs in The Suffering Tree.
The journey that does happen is one where Tori tries to solve a 300-year-old murder while the victim stands in front of her, very much alive. While this premise initially grabbed my attention, I was nonplussed by the character decisions. The history of Slaughter Farm is uncovered over time and that history includes slavery and indentured servitude. Where I think the author ultimately failed the audience is her treatment of this history. Cosimano puts white servants at the centre of the story in the past, definitively side-stepping any of the discourse surrounding black slavery in the US. The division of the narrative as occurring both in the past (leading up to the murder at the centre of the story) and the present (where Tori is trying to uncover said centuries-old murder) lends ample opportunity for non-white main characters, which Cosimano all but outright ignores. There is one secondary character who is described as non-white, and two tertiary characters. Out of these three characters, one is truly influential to the plot. Overall, it was confusing to read a story explicitly about slavery and indentured servitude in the US without black characters. This whitewashing of the story ultimately stood directly at odds with the historical fiction tendencies of the novel, and felt overall more like a cop out than a meaningful story decision.
Other issues I had with The Suffering Tree range from cookie-cutter villains to flat supporting characters. The Slaughters (the villains if only because of their unfortunate last name), owners of a huge amount of land in Chaptico, Maryland are almost cartoonishly motivated. None of the actions of the Slaughter family members make much sense beyond trying to mitigate gossip about their past. At no point would there have been legal consequences in the present for the events 300 years in the past if they hadn’t been terrible people in the present trying to cover up a historically normal set of circumstances. The events of the past were terrible, but not presently meaningful any more than as family history. In this way, the Slaughters are solely motivated by an urge to save face in front of their modern neighbors, which, frankly, I find somewhat ridiculous. It’s no secret that slavery and indentured servitude existed in the US. The secrets they are trying to keep stray minimally from this fact. The supporting characters in this novel are similarly two-dimensional. Many of them have no reason to help or hinder Tori, but do so anyway. All told, most of the characters amount to some lackluster storytelling.
There were some aspects of The Suffering Tree that could have become something special and interesting, but ultimately, I felt let down by this novel. Tori’s struggles with her self-harm and mental health never came to a satisfying conclusion — something I would have been thrilled to see addressed better in a YA book such as this one. The whitewashing of the slavery narrative felt forced, and detracted from the overall plot. Combined with some flat villains and additional characters, The Suffering Tree didn’t live up to its interesting promises of witchcraft and mystery.