This book has potential to be really good. It has a lot going on and it took me a while to read and get into seeing as its now 2023.

I was really excited about Boys of Alabama but it didn't live up to my expectations. I really enjoyed the writing style but while I normally love magical realism, I didn't think it was executed well here. I found it a little hard to get into and the characters didn't particularly resonate with me. That said, I'm interested to see what else this author will write.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wouldn't say this is one of my favorite books, but it as okay. It was well written and the plot was well thought out.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

I loved this incredibly messed up book! There is something so compelling about it - Southern Gothic queer football fiction. While there are pieces of the story I wish I had more clarity about, I appreciate Hudson's commitment to consistently locking the reader in to Max's perspective only from beginning to end. While I may end up wondering what exactly happened at church camp, I can appreciate this commitment to perspective as a literary tool. Also, it's not to say that Southern football culture is queer, but there is definitely queerness in Southern football culture that is almost always hidden and in this book, the author brings all of that out into the light of the story in both brutal and endearing ways. I'd still love to understand the "rules" of Max's abilities a bit more clearly, but then I guess so would Max.

Magical Realism is one of my favorite genres to read from so I thought I would give this a try. Unfortunately, I didn't find this that "magical." There were a lot of plot lines and themes that would have worked a bit better if the story was a bit more fleshed out. I felt like this was an unfinished book. We needed more. There wasn't enough character or plot development.
I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In an attempt to catch up with the reviews I fell behind on in 2020 I am only leaving star ratings. For the books that I didn't feel incredibly passionate about.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one. There was a constant feeling of uncertainty with this book, and it never really felt settled. The plot was confusing at times, which could have been justified by deeper character development, but it all felt kind of flat.

Trigger warnings for homophobia, Christian homophobia, rape, cult

DNF
Unfortunately, I was not aware of the trigger warnings for this title when I "wished" for it. Therefore, I had to stop reading the book. Thank you for understanding.

I enjoyed this one, though it's darker than many I read. It allows you to see the progression of getting pulled into a cult and how easy it is for outsiders to fall prey to that, even as they're targeted for what makes them outsiders. Warnings for rape and violence.

Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson tells the story of a German teenager called Max whose parents move to Alabama from Germany and the culture shock he faces as he tries to fit in with is new community despite also possessing a strange power that if discovered, could make him a pariah instead. The premise was fascinating but overall the execution was disappointing.

I understood and appreciate what Hudson was trying to do in the novel, but found the execution was inconsistent and lackluster. There are essential plot points the reader is introduced to early on that never get fully fleshed out, and even whole characters I wanted to know more about that only dip in and out of the book with little impact to the story. Finally, I am one that appreciates an open ending, but in this case, I don't think the novel brought the reader far enough into the story's central conflict to end the way it did. Overall, the book felt unfinished.

All that to say, on a sentence level Genevieve Hudson is a great writer, and the novel is a creative debut. I would definitely be interested to see what Hudson could do with a bit more experience, and perhaps stronger editorial guidance, in the future.

Boys of Alabama was a thought provoking book about religion, sexuality, prejudices, racism with an added level of paranormal. This book wasn't my taste, but I have had a few students read it based off my recommendations and they loved it!

I was given access to Boys of Alabama through Liveright Publishing for an honesty review. Thank you to them and Genevieve Hudson for the wonderful novel!

I overly excited about finally getting to read this novel. I've heard many good thing about it on social media. Max won my heart from the first chapter. It's never fun to be the new kid and even worse a new kid in a new country. The author added a little twist to the story. Max has powers that can bring animals and plants back to life. Between dealing with those powers and friendship lost, Max trying to just be normal. I was intrigued with Max questioning his sexuality. I feel like that is relatable for teens who are in the same boat. The author definitely approach the subject of religion exquisitely way.

The only complaint I had about this book was Pan and Max's mother. Pan's character got a little bit on my last nerve. He was so self center and a user of Max's gullibility. As for Max's mother, I felt like she could have been involved in the story line.

Over all this was a good read!!! I think this novel would make a good book selection for a book club. There are so many aspects that could be discuss and dissected!

For classic fantasy lovers who are yearning for something new.

“Boys of Alabama” by Genevieve Hudson is the new and unique take on gothic fiction. Hudson takes the classic new kid in town story and added themes of class, gender, sexuality, and race, with also the important note on how easy it is to use upbringing and herd mentality to alter a person’s worldview. Using their personal upbringing in the south as inspiration, Hudson’s words quickly suck you into this southern fantasy.

In the story, a German boy, Max, moves to Alabama after his father gets a new job. Hoping to leave past traumas, and his magical secret behind, Max welcomes the move. Once in his new town though, Max quickly understands that how different this new world is to his old one. Able to blend into the “new normal” with ease, it isn’t until he meets and falls in love with the class “witch” Pan, when he begins to question his quick acceptance to the town’s beliefs in faith, power, and identity.

Incredibly imaginative and deep, this story reminded me of a “Lord of the Flies”. I appreciated the multiple messages written into this novel and found it incredibly relevant to what is happening today.

This book is needed. As an LGBTQ+ person from rural America, I could relate a lot from this book. In future classes I expect to adapt this to my syllabus. Overall, I really enjoyed reading it.

The writing kept me reading.
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Hudson does such a great job painting a picture of the setting in rural Alabama that the place jumps off the page as a character itself, a critical character that is central to the story.
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I received a free, advanced copy of this book from NetGalley, but I ended up listening to the audiobook after its release date. I didn't read any synopsis before diving into this book. So, I didn't see Max's power coming at all. Initially, everything seems fairly normal, but you quickly realize there is a supernatural element just beneath the surface. This seems fitting though because the town also has its secrets, both in the past and present, and those secrets slowly trickle to the surface as the book progresses.
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Max is a German teenager who strives to fit into his new town and make friends. He starts playing football and gets involved with the election campaign of "the Judge." As the book unfolds, you learn about the dark side of the judge's religion.
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My enjoyment of this book mostly came after finishing it and attempting to put all the pieces together. The plot was slow for the first half and I kept trying to figure out where we were going and what message the book was trying to send. The story seems full of symbolism and would be a great discussion book for a book club. Also, I'd love to hear the author's take on it. But sometimes the symbols seemed a little too obvious even if I wasn't exactly sure how they fit into the whole story.
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With all that said, I will definitely read future books by this author because Hudson is a fantastic writer.

Genevieve Hudson's "Boys of Alabama" is one of the strangest books I've read in a long time - which made it a deeply refreshing experience. I felt like I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what would happen. The novel centers on Max, a German immigrant to the American South who struggles to navigate American culture, his own sexuality, and conflicting loyalties with a gender-fluid witch, Pan, and the boys of his football team. There is a strong and disorienting undercurrent of magical realism in this one - Max can restore life to dead plants and animals - but Max's general bewilderment with life made this easier to swallow. There is one editorial choice here that I question: Hudson eschews dialogue tags, which sometimes makes it difficult to know when a character is speaking. This one won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it will be worthwhile for patient readers and I especially enjoyed Pan's various incarnations of themself. A complex vision of a changing South and what it means to be different.

Max is a sophomore in high school, so about 15 or 16 and his father has moved him and his mother to a tiny Alabama town. Max is looking fro a fresh start after losing his best friend and love of his life, Nils, to disease. Max has a secret power to raise dead things back to life--plant or animal--and he feels torn by guilt that he never tried to resurect Nils--and fears he may have accidentally done this just before Nils was buried.

Max is a fast runner and he gets recruited to the football team of his small private high school, God's Way. The team and their friends are especially holy, Lorne's father the Judge is a prophet of sorts. Max doesn't understand the subtext, but there's talk about giving over sins and using snake venom or rat poison to purify the spirit. There's a huge current of "Jesus saves" and God-loving, which clashes with teenaged binge-drinking and what seems to be non-consensual sex perpetrated on the MC by his friend and fellow teammate. Max is both captivated by, and scared of, Pan the genderqueer witch of town. Pan discovers Max's power and serves as a confidante for Max, and his soft place to land when he needs one. Pan is a tentative sexual partner for Max and at least one other boy, it seems.

The prose is odd with nary a quotation mark to be found. It took a while for me to become accustomed to this. It is lilting and lyrical, told through Max's confused point of view, struggling to code-switch between his German roots and the Americana tableau of Alabama southern pride, guns, God, and football. It's the first time Max is seen as a boy worthy of friendship, his oddity is his foreignness, not his powers which he has fought to hide for years. Just as he's fitting in, he's giving away the only part of him that's special and unique, and that seems a pretty hefty metaphor. The end trauma is a hate crime--and it's brutally couched in trying to "save" a friend's immortal soul. I'm pretty sure that's what parents who send their kids to conversion therapy think, too. The snake-charming, possible poisonings were true cult action, and it seemed virtually no one was speaking out. There are only a few people who talk sense in the story, and they are relegated to the outer edges and diminished as accessory, or occult. Max venerates cultists and whack-jobs because they want him to belong to their arcane secret society. It's a dangerous paradigm that Max falls prey to, and Instead of calling it out, the end falls completely flat. It's written to be a Southern gothic, but the story landed off the mark to me.

I think this is one I'm going to have read again and possible again. I enjoy magical realism, but I think I let the writing style overwhelm my senses a little too much. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I did. There is definitely something surreal about the writing style and I love when authors experiment with prose - but I think this time around, it took me a little too out of the book. That said, now that I know what to expect I can go in and catch some of the things I may have missed during that initial read.

Enjoyable. Not exactly what I was expecting but if you're looking for something different this is the book for you. I enjoyed the writing and look forward to more books by Genevieve Hudson. Take a look. See if it's something you'd like. Happy reading!

It’s been awhile since I’ve love-hated a book as much as I enjoyed love-hating this one. Contradictory, obviously, but you’ve only had to read Maria McCann’s As Meat Loves Salt—or any other book that you loved hating, or hated loving, or didn’t even realize you liked it until you’d finished—to know precisely what I mean when I say that I wanted to chuck my kindle across the room and yet I couldn’t put this book down for want of seeing what the hell it was on about.

Delilah’s is a story in the Book of Judges, and while I would never presume that an author has used specific archetypes as metaphor on purpose, it’s difficult not to draw some connections to the biblical character and her betrayal of the Judge of Israel when reading this novel. Delilah, Alabama, is precisely the sort of place that would discover the source of a man’s strength, lop it off at that source, and then sacrifice him to the enemy.

The town’s very own Judge is the sort of spurious psychopomp who can, and does, use his own powers of deception to propagandize and weaponize his snake oil evangelism, and as I watched him wield this dogmatic fervor to very literally groom the story’s sixteen-year-old protagonist, Max, in ways that made me viscerally recoil (it was difficult not to perceive it with a Satan’s temptation of Christ element in their interactions), I applauded Genevieve Hudson for using this as well as other stereotypes—it’s all about God, guns, and football—to such skillful effect. At one point I made a review note that simply stated, “These people are vile,” a harsh and unfair generalization because, while I didn’t mean all of the characters—I related closely to Max’s mother, felt for Max, was intrigued by Pan (make connections to the Greek god at your pleasure), and wished some of the other minor characters had been more thoroughly explored—the stereotypes are such that I couldn’t contain my reaction to them, nor could I ignore my own ingrained biases. Those conventions do exist, though, not because all people but because enough people, and this combined with a romanticizing language that drew a picturesque landscape while populating it with the concepts of religious fervor, homophobia, violence, American excess, God and politics, God in politics, and throwing some of our most shameful history into the light of day, my savior complex dictated my yearning to rescue Max before he became irretrievably indoctrinated in this way of life.

Amongst its realism is a thread of magic that feeds the metaphorical aspects of the story, specifically in Max as resurrectionist. The Southern Gothic conventions are met with a horror that has nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to do with man’s inhumanity to man, what we teach boys about masculinity, how blithely certain words are thrown around in casual conversation, and how the urgency to fit in can be used to manipulate. Not noted should be content warnings for self-harm, rape, graphic violence, and the aforementioned homophobia, so readers should be cautious of those inclusions in the story before deciding to pick this one up. Additionally, Hudson’s choice to eliminate the use of quoted dialogue (i.e., there isn’t a quotation mark used in the entirety of the book) delivers Max’s journey as full-on narrative in which the author’s voice dictates rather than allowing me an immersive experience with Max telling his own story. It took a while to adapt to the delivery and is most definitely an acquired taste.

Boys of Alabama packs an impactful emotional punch and succeeds in painting a none-too-flattering picture of the times and then reflects it back to its readers in striking ways.