This is really quick, and written in an easy conversational style, but didn't get too deep. The ending felt a bit abrupt.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

If you grew up in Florida during this time period, you're going to love this book. If you did not, some of it will be confusing, but the pure quirkiness of this family should keep the reader engaged.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's a fine memoir.

4.5 ⭐️ As one who is about the same age as the author, also grew up in Fl, also a former journalist (but only early in my career) and as someone who loves coming of age stories, I enjoyed this memoir immensely. I am so glad I came across Carl Hiaasen’s NYT book review and found this story. Thank you Holt Books for the ARC.

I was really excited about this coming-of-age memoir set in pre-Disney Florida and written by a queer-identified author. What I most admired about the writing was the vivid characters. They leapt off the page to the point that even the most flawed among them became endearing. In a way, Through the Groves reminded me of The Glass Castle or Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter, but set in Florida and with a much less extreme experience of financial insecurity. I did find myself wanting more of a takeaway from the story, perhaps more about the author’s coming out experience in a state largely inhospitable to the LGBTQ+ community, although the author certainly does not owe this to the reader. This was an excellent read and a unique look at a version of Florida I may not have otherwise glimpsed. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! I found it difficult to put down. Anne Hull is an amazing writer. The reader is immediately transmitted to 1960s central Florida- to a place known as The Ridge. Life surrounds the orange groves that cover that part of the state. Her father, a former pesticide salesman, now in the orange juice business, takes Anne with him on his route. (This was her teacher-mother's idea, in order to make sure her dad didn't wind up drinking or in places he should not have been.)

We meet Hull's family in all their eccentric glory. Her father grew up on The Ridge in a family of orange growers. Her mother had come from up north with her own mother- a woman who spoke in a foreign accent although she was American. There is also her easy-going brother Dwight, whose name the family decides to change to Jim later in the story.

As her coming-of-age story unwinds, Hull takes us back to the 1960s and early 1970s: The Jackson Five, bell bottoms, shopping malls, Tiger Beat Magazine. Her family often struggled financially as they moved around central Florida following her mother's teaching jobs and her father's life in the Groves.

As Hull moves through her teen years, she begins to come to terms with her homosexuality, eventually realizing that she would eventually have to leave the Groves in order to live her life as she chose.

This is a moving memoir that took me back to my own years in the south in the 1970s. I highly recommend it.

Read this book if...
...you love biographies and memoirs
...you love stories from the southern states
...you enjoy coming-of-age stories
... you enjoy stories about family