When I tell you I had no idea for most of the book what was going on, you will understand how I still don't know if I liked it or not. I feel I liked it because I couldn't stop myself from reading it, but most of the time I was confused and other times I wonder exactly where all of this was going.
Well, it did get to the part where slowly everything was explained and it was both terrifying and fascinating.
It was raw and intense, cruel and true. And otherworldly of sorts.
I did like it, but I have no idea exactly why.

Vern is seven months pregnant and fleeing the “compound” (it’s a cult) in which she was raised. For the first few years of their lives, Vern raises her children in the woods. As her mysterious affliction worsens, she knows they need to get to a city. She sets out on a journey to find her former love, Lucy, and is taken in by an indigenous woman and her aunt. As she beings to build relationships with these people, she’s haunted by ghosts of her past, and there may be something more sinister at work in the compound that she suspected.

This book is so good! It’s weird. There are tons of cool characters, POC queer folks and relationships, cults! Not white cults! Something I don’t think I’ve ever seen, which fascinates me. I will read literally anything Rivers Solomon ever writes.

I love their storytelling style and refusal to chill in one genre rooted in modern reality. There’s plenty to unpack, but I don’t want to spoil too much, so all I will say is read it and follow Vern down the rabbit hole of this strange and intriguing world.

Sorrowland is another absolutely stunning book from Rivers Solomon. There are unimaginable horrors told in brilliant narrative, with gripping characters and powerful youth who will be on my mind for a long time to come. I couldn’t put this down, and it’s an incredibly important story to hear.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advance copy. It’s beautiful and heart-wrenching and absolutely vital. There are loads of content warnings for this one, so definitely guard your heart.

This will undoubtedly be one of my top books of the year.

This was different from anything I've read before! It was intense and haunting, not only the characters of Vern and Bridget and Gogo, but the story of Cainland. Particularly the story of Vern's mother, RuthAnn, stayed with me.... because first we see RuthAnn after she's spent time at Cainland, and later Vern recollects the path that led RuthAnn to Cainland, and it must made me think of life choices in general that people make influenced in part due to circumstances beyond their control. Women made up the cast of characters in this, for the most part. I found diverse representation that I haven't really seen portrayed in this way before, and I really appreciated that. Parts of this felt so raw, and Vern is such a young, defiant person in this, put into situations that are supposed to be beyond her years. This was my first book by this author, although I have The Deep and An Unkindness of Ghosts on my TBR, and this author is definitely on my radar now.

Who was it that said dystopian science fiction couldn’t be gothic? They forgot to tell Rivers Solomon who has given the mythology of American rugged individualism a twist that its staunchest devotees might not see coming. Not part of my usual reading, but there is a real articulate voice here and this makes for a strange, personal feeling in this very strange work.

This book just did not hit the mark for me. It felt like it was trying to do way too many things at once, and it didn't accomplish it naturally. The first 60% of the novel I could wholly appreciate the well-crafted writing and I was invested in Vern and the well-being of her and her children, as well as getting to the bottom of the mystery of Cainland. However, the book took a bizarre swerve that seemed wildly unnecessary for the points that it seemed to be trying to make about gender, race, power, etc. In fact, for me, it took away from those themes. I see others describing the book as fantastical and atmospheric, and can appreciate that element when a book feels like it can support it, however, the last portion of the novel just felt too disjointed for me. I do think it's important to note that the representation shown in this novel is important, and that I fully recognize that the novel may be far more impactful for members of communities such as the Black community and the LGBTQ+ community. Again, my major qualm with the book has to do with the sprouting-fungus-body-armour that lets her communicate with dead people. Yeah...I'm just gonna leave that there.

This book was simply amazing. Solomon is an expert of the slow burn. Each word precisely measured to maximize tension and draw you deeper into story.

Imagine yourself at 16, full of rebellion, questions, and also pregnant by a man you were forced to marry. You were raised in a place apart from the rest of the world, yet you had full knowledge of its existence. Taught to hate the outside world, you come to despise your home as well, the lies and secrets. So, heavy with child you flee into the woods and give birth to not one child but two and there you make yourself a new home. This much alone would be too much for some to handle, but not for Vern. On top of all that, she also has to contend with the person hunting her down and the mysterious changes of her body which are equally wonderful and frightening.

The mystery of Cainland is a tangled web of lies, fanatical propaganda and shadowy government dealings. Solomon keeps you guessing until the last second. Unapologetically black, queer, and down right weird. I loved each and every page.

I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

A compelling read. Beautifully written, well-thought-out characters, and a developed setting. I truly enjoyed this one! Very different than my normal reads, but in a good way!

Throughout the novel I found myself not really enjoying this and couldn’t really figure out why. At first I thought it was the writing but then I realized it’s the lack of plot. It’s more character driven with some changes happen to our main character but that wasn’t really enough for me.

This kind of science fiction.. I’m not a fan of - it kind of makes me squeamish. I also feel like it could be categorized as fantasy and maybe a little bit of horror? I appreciate the multiple topics discussed such as race, sexuality, religion, misogyny, and more but I feel like it was a lot to tackle at once. I like what Solomon did and I think the genre bending and uniqueness is great but this just sadly did not work for me. It was a big struggle to get through and I don’t think I will remember this one. I actually deeply considered not to finish it but forced myself to keep going.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and to the publisher for an advanced copy even though I read this a month after publication date lol

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon is a raw and visceral book about a young albino woman escaping a cult with her two twin babies. It begins when our main character, Vern, escapes Cainland and tries to survive in the wild. Only too quickly does she realize that Cainland and her husband, the leader, refuse to let her go without a fight. Can Vern survive in the wild? Will she have to assimilate into the real world? Can she trust anybody? This book is truly an exciting journey you don’t want to miss.

I gave the book 4/5 stars. Here’s why...

What I loved:
- I loved how unapologetic the characters are. Their behavior and actions don’t need to be justified.
- there are queer people everywhere and black is beautiful - need I say more?
- I love the one with nature aspect that Vern expresses
- the symbiotic relationship with the fungus, now that was such a cool concept

What I didn’t love as much:
- Howling and Feral’s behavior for such a young age. I mean maybe I can buy into it since they were raised in the wild, but they talk way too above level for me to agree,
- I don’t at all mind the addition of Ruthanne’s story. However, I felt like it was so randomly just inserted into the the book
- it was a bit slow at times
- I wanted so much more with Queen and the Fungus!!!

Overall, this book was a fantastic read. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s even remotely interested in the premise.

Thank you to NetGalley & Farrah, Straus, and Giroux for sending me a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Sorrowland is haunting, entrancing, and enthralling. On a macro level, it explores what life grows outside of white supremacist hetero-normative society, how that life sustains, and what happens when it no longer can sustain. On an intimate level, it is the story of young, interminably strong Vern, escaping a cult, haunted and hunted by the past, and learning how to be vulnerable to love after so much trauma. It is an exceptional thing.

I loved this gothic horror. I never knew what was going to happen, but unlike most books where I'm constantly trying to figure out where the story is going, I was just enjoying the ride, excited to see where it was going to lead me.

CW: abuse, animal killing, graphic violence, gaslighting, body dimorphism, cult, paedophilia, homophobia, suicide, torture, hallucination, rape, abuse of power, drugs abuse, alcoholism, self harm, medical abuse.


What a story! What a powerful story! What a marvellous powerful story! I am left hardly without words as I fear I won’t be able to make justice to the story in a short review with my broken English. On the other side, it is a book that is not easy to read, and by easy I will allude to the vast CW and how challenging the narration is. How it demands an involvement from the reader, how it wants to make you uncomfortable for a reason because Vern [uses she/her but also talks about her gender fluidity] is seldom comfortable and I feel that is a great way to communicate it.

This book ticks so many boxes in terms of things I consider that should be written about more often and from their adequate POV. Yes, the story is fictional but you can feel how it draws from real life stories that usually are hushed successfully because people are just happy to look the other way. Like “if I do not see it, it does not happen”. Things like black pain, exploitation, the social position of black women, sexual exploration, vulnerable people and their manipulation… I am sure I will be accidentally leaving things out, because I stopped taking notes about half way through.

This is the story of Vern as a mother, but also, as a 15 year old girl and the things she has to go through: escape the cult driven life where she was forced to marry and have sex, give birth in the forest while on the run to carry on to raise her two kids, without any help, and figure out what is happening to her on a more physical and personal level. And that is only the very few chapters. Vern life was and never is easy.

I found it a bit hard to get into the story at the beginning. There was so much information, and so many things and details, I thought I was not being able to grasp that let me very confused. Completely overwhelmed. As I kept reading on, I thought that was the intention of the author and indeed part of what they wanted to transmit. I think that keeping reading and going with the flow was the right decision because soon after I was completely absorbed into Vern’s life and what was going to happen next. I still needed to make pauses at times, due to the content and how explicit it is, but it did not feel gratuitous at any time. It is raw, unadulterated and uncomfortable, just like Vern, and it wants to give you that slap on the face while you are reading so you can also wake up and really understand what you are reading.

Because of this reasons I understand it may not be a mainstream read. Or even a pleasant one. Again, please check the CW, but I would always encourage you to pick it up, it you feel ready for it, because the pros surpass very generously the cons. Those CW are also a weapon, like a simile, that the author uses to do a very harsh critique to the US society, history, politics and medicine.


All of this is wrapped with an outstanding narrative and a wonderful writing style. The characters are so well brought to life that at times it acquired a very cinematic approach, it was very easy for me to follow their actions in my mind and I felt part of their journey and growth. It is also superb how the author describes and puts into words all those raw feelings of suffering, hate, and not knowing. How well they get into that active critique of many injustices towards minorities (black and native American people) from real non fiction, and uses their ability to create this amazing story around it.

Sorrowland is haunting and a balm for my mixed race, Black heart. Solomon’s prose is gorgeous and lush as always. I purchased the audiobook after reading the ARC and the narrator’s voice is lovely. I’m so excited this is finally out so I can demand all my friends read it.

At 15 years old, Vern, a Black Albino girl runs away pregnant from Cainland, the religious cult where she grew up. She goes to the woods, where she raises her twin sons, is hunted by Cainland people, but also haunted by her upbringing and her past, and her body also starts changing in horrifying ways.
She leaves the woods to escape the people of Cainland, but also to find answers about her past, which she believes is connected to her changing body.

If there's one thing I learned from Wilder Girls by Rory Power, it's that I do not like body horror.
Sorrowland drove home the fact that I REALLY do not like body horror.
Going into this book, I was expecting a lot of action, and yes horror too, but I assumed the action would be the majority of the book.
Instead, the horror ended up taking up most of the narrative; the horror of Vern's changing body, but also the horror of America's violently racist history.
I appreciated the discussion of being Black and Native American in America, and the violence that is visited upon Black and Native people physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, e.t.c
But ultimately the book was a bit slow, and the body horror a bit too much for me in certain scenes.
I still really love how Rivers Solomon writes, and will continue to read their work.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! Lot’s of complicated feelings about this book. First, Solomon is one hell of a writer. The imagery is outstanding. Sections of this book creeped me out so thoroughly I was physically weak, especially sections about Vern’s changing body. No spoilers here. This is certainly a book that I will recommend to those who like to read weird gothic fiction a la Mexican Gothic or conspiracy theory stories with a bit of the supernatural.

There was a lot I really liked about this novel. However, I felt like I was reading two separate books that should have worked together but somehow didn’t. One is very atmospheric, contains a lot of the natural world, and has supernatural elements. The second book deals with the atrocities (in particular, medical) inflicted upon Black populations. It wasn’t that anything felt implausible, quite the opposite, it was simply that the “second book” felt a little underdeveloped.

That said, this is still a solid read with incredible writing and I hope a lot of people I know read this, because I need to talk about it!!!!

Here are a few quotes I thought were particularly amazing:

“The last stages of labor had come on with the quickness of a man in want of a fuck, and with the same order of operations, too. A sudden demand, a vague series of movements, a driving push toward the finish, followed by Vern’s immense relief when it was all over. Birthing had been no more trying than anything else in her life, and this time, at least, she had a baby boy to show for her trouble.”

“Going against tended to end more rightly, more justly, than going with. People were wrong. Rules, most of the time, favored not what was right, but what was convenient or preferable to those in charge.”

“What a strange sadness, to be done with the woman who’d made you.”

“She wanted to end him right here, right now, but even more than that she wanted to understand what had gone so wrong with his upbringing. What turned babies, fragile and curious, into Shermans? Into Ollies? Into men who could not interact with a new thing without wanting to dominate it?”

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for the review copy!

Vern is fifteen and pregnant and living with a cult. Running away from an abusive husband she learns to survive off her wits and her own sense of determination as she finds for herself and her twins. This book has a huge twist that I didn’t necessarily expect and I couldn’t stop reading. While the book has supernatural elements I wouldn’t say it’s completely relatable as so much of it is rooted in a variety of difficult topics. Cults, religion, death, abuse....this book has a wide range of trigger warnings but they’re all dealt with in a way that fits the story. Overall a very good read! A very dark fable that makes you really think. Definitely recommend this one.

I ended up DNF'ing this book. I was fascinated by the description of a book that was southern gothic horror mixed with scifi. I got it fairly shortly before it was released and started it a couple of weeks before expecting to be done with it by publishing day. It took me a month and a half to get 30% through this book and I finished 6 other books in that time. I love gothic fiction and this book didn't have that same feeling to it at all, where you're uneasy but you can't explain why. This just was so much filler and I was bored with it. I decided to DNF because I realized I honestly didn't care about what happens to the main character.

Seven month pregnant Vern flees her superstrict black religious community to escape to the forest and have her twins. She raises them feral in the woods for several years, dodging capture many times and digging deeper into the woods. But as she feels her body changing, she escapes with the twins to head for an old friend who had escaped the community and discovers some horrifying truths about who she is and why the community was created and protected by high level white government folks. It’s a very disturbing novel, extremely well written, and one that draws on far too much real American history.

I fell hopelessly in love with this book. The evocative imagery and palpable emotions were captivating from the first page. Half of the time I had no idea what I was reading, I just knew I wanted more.

Vern gives birth to twins alone in the woods after fleeing her abusive husband who is the leader of a Black religious cult. That right there is enough to base a pretty great story on. What evolves here instead is a horror/gothic/sci-fi beautiful nightmare. Tackling everything from race to government corruption to experimentation on humans to gender norms, this is an ambitious narrative that just works. The political commentary doesn't detract from a haunting and somehow romantic story, instead, it adds to the depth of the emotions felt by the characters.

There are very graphic scenes, both violent and sexual, but they feel important to the story, not extraneous. Gory and terrifying, yet beautiful, I know this story will stick with me for a long time - and not just because Vern's hauntings are sure to give me nightmares for weeks; they are the absolute worst thing I could ever imagine having to deal with.

The narrative feels fluid, usually from Vern's POV but easily moving to other perspectives as needed. The characters are incredibly realistic despite the sci-fi twist. It seems totally plausible that this could happen and this is exactly how these characters would react, which has to be attributed to Rivers Solomon's skill. They planted a grain of truth inside an insane plot and made it seem possible.