Hello, everyone! Another book review again from me after a year. I started this blog when I was in my second year in college and now I am graduating this October 2024. It wasn’t an easy journey and I had to face many challenges that transcend various realms and realities LOL but had to endure them to get where I am today!

For today’s review, we have here the Dear Aunt Addi by Aaralyn Adams which is about the secret that the town historian had kept for so many years and now threatening to be known by everyone. Its genres are general fiction (adult), historical fiction, and mystery & thrillers. I found this book in NetGalley.

Digging into its lore, Dear Aunt Addi covers many controversial elements and twists that are really confusing at first. Still, once the readers connect the dots, the book becomes so intriguing you cannot help but finish. It is still jarring to learn that humans are capable of doing sickening things to each other and have to repay for it even after years it happened.

Honestly, the plot is so confusing that I have to stop reading this for a while and clear my mind. The characters have different personalities and backgrounds every time I switch pages. If you don’t mind, always have a pen and paper beside you to take some notes if are also having difficulties remembering details.

Overall, this book is a good reminder of human nature and the extent we can do to protect ourselves and our love ones. I am giving this book a 4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐. It is recommended for ages 18 and up. Please get your copy now!

*DNF*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley for an honest review.

Didn't finish this one unfortunately. I hope some other people like this, just not for me.

This book had a lot of promise but didn't have enough follow through with character development and felt confusing at times.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC

Dear Aunt Addi tells the story of a reporter trying to uncover the truth behind a particular family. The legends go back through generations and generations living on/working on a plantation in the South.

I enjoyed the story but did find it a bit confusing at times. It's a shorter story and I think it would have done very well as a longer book. I think the characters could have been developed more as to not be confusing and the legend could have been explained in more detail. The premise of a great book is definitely there but needed to be drawn out a bit more.

I enjoyed the writing style and it definitely had me wanting to find out if the legends/stories were true about this family and how they tied into other families living on the plantations. However, it left me wanting more.

Dear Aunt Auddi is a fairly short story that leaves the reader a lot to question. It tells the generational stories of slave-era plantation families and is mostly set in a large southern mansion. The characters could have been much better developed to make keeping track of them easier. They all seemed to have nearly identical characteristics and the family trees blurred. I would have loved to hear more in depth details about the gardens, towns, and swamps quickly mentioned in the settings of re-tellings.

Dear Aunt Addi by Aaralyn Adams is a relatively short intergenerational story that probably would've been better presented in full-length novel form. It is the story of long-ago crimes between families in the plantation and slave-era south. The secrets of the crimes have been passed through the generations and the story is really of a local journalist making a claim to a long-hidden treasure of gold bars. Most of the story is set in and near a southern mansion and is told through the re-telling of the family histories to the journalist.

The many similar characters could've been developed more to make keeping track of them easier and I felt more could've bene made of the mansion and the surrounding gardens, town and swamps where some of the story was set. This is why I'm thinking a longer-form would've benefitted the story.

This is an interesting and short book which features a town historian telling her story. A story of her life in 1895. as a town historin myself I was hooked.
But you can't trust anyone and I guess that is the message in this story.
I liked it.