3.5 stars

Received an ARC to read Tangeroot. I wasnt sure what to expect but the cover was beautiful and the book was definitely not what I expected. A journey of a girl navigating through a new life when her mother makes you move and give up some important dreams. A journey of navigating herself while dealing with deep rooted family history and racism.

I loved this book! Noni is a relatable protagonist and it's easy to sympathize with her as her parents' divorce throws a wrench into her summer plan to pursue her dream internship. Noni's career goals are odds with her mother's plans for her, and being forced to move only widens the rift between them.

Moving from Boston to a rural, conservative town is a big change, and Noni finds herself struggling to adapt. And while she deals with racism, she also has to confront her own prejudices against the people in her new community. I appreciated the nuanced, complex conversations about topics such as race, prejudice, and identity.

Noni's investigation of her ancestors and the history of Magnolia was really interesting. I loved following along with her research, making connections, and, in the process, watching her grow as a person. This book addresses the messiness of ancestry and its impact on self identity, and explores how burying uncomfortable truths can affect relationships.

I also loved that this story, while fictional, draws on historical events and the experiences of real people. It's clear that the author did her research to build a story that feels grounded in reality. I hope to read more by this author in the future!

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Tangleroot by Kalela Williams is a first person-POV YA contemporary. Noni and her mother, a scholar of Black literature and president of Stonepost College, move to rural Virginia, away from everything Noni had been planning for herself. With her dreams of going to Boston University and studying fashion and design put on hold, Noni looks into the owners of the home she now lives in, a home that used to be a plantation and a family that had enslaved Noni’s ancestors.

I loved the nuance that Kalela Williams threaded into this and how she posited a lot of difficult questions. When Noni sees that an exhibit in Philadelphia is purposefully leaving out minstrel shows, she clearly states that they are racist and offensive, but asks if it’s right to ignore that they happened. The narrative doesn’t provide a clear answer here, but it does ask the reader to ask themselves that question. Noni also deals with a lot of racism in her new community but she shows that she has a bit of classism herself in calling the people around her ‘hicks’ to a coworker who had been very kind to her, which greatly insults this coworker.

Noni’s mother, Radiance, can be very controlling when it comes to what she thinks is best for Noni’s life. Radiance not only removes Noni from New England, she also takes away Noni’s chance of going to BU and forces Noni to sign up for classes at the local community college, work, and tutoring lessons. What’s worse, many of the courses are decided by Radiance and they are not what Noni is interested in because Radiance believes Noni has a bright future in literature and history. The ironic thing is, Noni does love history, fashion history, and she’s great at research; she’s just not given the chance to focus on the topics she likes. Despite this, Radiance is displayed loving her daughter very deeply, she just believes she knows best and doesn’t really listen sometimes.

Any book that takes place on a plantation is going to have to reckon with racism and the history of enslavement. Kalela Williams handles the topic with nuance, depth, and with complete honesty in depicting the South’s racist history and present. There are some very uncomfortable moments and some very period accurate racist beliefs. This is far from the first book I have read depicting racism in the South, past and present, and I was shocked at some of what was on the page even if I one hundred believe that did happen and still happens.

Content warning for period accurate racism, depictions of enslavement, mentions of sexual assault and child abuse.

I would recommend this to readers looking for a YA book discussing anti-Black racism with honesty, fans of YA that has a strong focus on mother-daughter relationships that also want a focus on social issues, and those looking for a contemporary YA to open up discussions in their in-group about today’s political climate.

Thank you Netgalley and MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

“Tangleroot” by Kalela Williams is a thought-provoking YA book that explores the journey of a young Black woman, Noni, as she grapples with her identity, her family's past, and her future ambitions. The story is set against the backdrop of a rural town in Virginia, where Noni's mother, Radiance, has taken a job as president of a small private college with deep historical ties to their family's enslaved ancestors. At the heart of “Tangleroot” is Noni’s struggle to reconcile her dreams of studying fashion and designing costumes for theater with her mother's expectations and her newfound interest in her family's history. Initially resistant to her mother's insistence that she join her in Virginia for the summer, Noni is drawn into a mystery surrounding a tombstone bearing her name and birthdate, which ignites a passion for uncovering her family's past. Before getting into this book, I do want to provide some content warnings, which include blatant racism, even from Noni’s “friends” at the beginning of the book. If this book were to be used in the classroom, some really good conversations could be made about the racism and ignorance demonstrated throughout the book. However, some specific language is used, like the “N” word, which may be a concern for the classroom. Another content warning I want to bring up is emotional abuse, specifically from Noni’s mother. If you are sensitive to emotional abuse and extremely controlling mothers, you may not be able to enjoy this book. I personally found it difficult to finish this book because of the mother’s portrayal, especially because she received an undeserved redemption at the end.

Williams masterfully captures the complexity of Noni’s character, portraying her growth from a naive and somewhat spoiled teenager into a young woman who learns to forgive herself and others for their mistakes. Her journey is relatable and filled with emotional depth, as she navigates the difficult terrain of adolescence, familial expectations, and the heavy weight of historical legacy. You can really see Noni grow as a character, especially because of her connection to history that only strengthens throughout the course of the story. “Tangleroot” also shines in its atmospheric writing and richly developed characters. The historical elements are meticulously researched, adding layers of authenticity to the story. The book deals with heavy themes, including racism, historical trauma, and the complexities of Black identity in America, with grace and sensitivity. What I enjoyed the most in this book was Noni’s exploration of the history of the small town and seeing how this history still has an influence today.

However, the relationship between Noni and her mother, Radiance, is one of the book's most contentious aspects. I found Radiance's character to be emotionally abusive, exerting excessive control over Noni's life and dismissing her interests in favor of academic achievement. The book portrays Radiance as a deeply flawed character whose redemption arc feels completely undeserved. Her abrupt change of heart and minimal apology for her controlling behavior towards Noni—such as forcing her to stay in Virginia and enroll in a community college against her will—left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I felt that the resolution failed to adequately address the depth of Radiance's emotional manipulation and the impact it had on Noni’s life. I wished Noni would have stood up to her mother more and take control of her own life, especially since she is 18 and a legal adult.

Noni’s decision at the end of the book to abandon her dreams of costume design in favor of pursuing a scholarly path like her mother’s felt very abrupt and disappointing. It suggests that her passion for fashion was just a phase, overshadowed by the demands and expectations of her mother. This choice also leaves the impression that Noni is living her mother's dreams rather than her own, which could have been more balanced by allowing her to pursue her interests in tandem with exploring her family's history.

Overall, “Tangleroot” is a well-written book that excels in its portrayal of a young woman coming of age in a challenging environment. It captures the essence of self-discovery and the struggle to find one’s place in the world amidst conflicting desires and expectations. I just could not get past Radiance’s appalling behavior throughout, which is why I have to give this book 3 stars even though I enjoyed the overall plot centered around the history aspect.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via Netgalley for review purposes; this in no way influences my review.

This really is such a great book. I really enjoyed the plot line of this book. By the end I needed more and more of all the characters. A story about history, especially in times where the worst kinds of people try to twist or bury it (which is always intersting espically in today's climate), is always needed in fiction, because it brings out a lot about ourselves we wouldn't know about, otherwise. I can’t wait to see what else this author does.

Totally recommend!

The thoroughly enjoyed the plot line of this book. It delves into the stories of Noni’s ancestors and does so in a captivating way. While I was reading, I kept imagining a tv series playing in my head — this would make for a great mini series (hint hint).
My only real drawbacks were the writing style. I found it hard to reconcile the wonderful story with the writing/word usage Kalea Williams employed. Additionally, I think the book could have been longer with greater detail if the author felt compelled to add more (I.e., the results of the DNA test whose results could make Noni’s genetic pool much more complicated if you know what I mean).

Gosh, where to start with this book.

Tangleroot opens with Noni being forced to give an opening speech to introduce her mother, Radiance, as the new president of Stonepost college, but the speech has been edited because Radiance is pushing to have the college renamed after their ancestor, Cuffee Fortune, who built and opened the college. Noni isn’t able to finish the speech and accidentally hot mics her mom when she reiterates that she didn’t want to the speech. Radiance is a force, and she’s doing a lot to dictate what she thinks is the best path for Noni, not ever seeming to listen when Noni talks about her passion for costume design. When they move to Tangleroot, a former plantation that their ancestors were enslaved at, Noni happens across the cemetery where the Dearborns, the white enslavers, were buried and finds the headstone for Sophronia Dearborn and infant son, which starts her down a path of trying to learn who this person was and what happened because they share a first name and birthdate. But because her mother refuses to give any attention to more white people and her focus is particularly on Cuffee’s story and broadly on the Black histories that are forgotten, Noni doesn’t feel she’s able to talk to her mom about what she’s researching, or as things start to get out of her control.

This was a really great story of family secrets and small town “everyone knows except the person affected” “secrets,” as well as the importance of community and how stories and memories are kept alive in oral histories. I also really liked how there are several instances where, when hard and painful things come up that people want to brush under the rug, Noni asks why they don’t want to talk about it when it happened. Really pushes home the importance of how we can’t just pretend the terrible things didn’t happen, and that those terrible things don’t still have an impact on current history.

I also had a lot of fun with figuring out who Sophie was and Noni’s family history. Not all the revelations were pleasant, but I think it did a lot of good things with, like, challenging the mythical purity of white southern belles and how complicit white women were in the horrors experienced by and perpetuated against enslaved Black people. I do think some of it definitely did the thing where connections are made to fit the story, but I still enjoyed seeing all the connections come together. The ending was also super comforting and beautiful, and really brought things full circle. All around this was an excellent story and even when Noni was making questionable choices, I couldn’t stop rooting for her. The family secrets and figuring out the family history was one of my favorite parts, especially how much Noni learned by talking to people and finding recordings or transcripts of first hand accounts. Tangleroot does so many things in how Noni, Radiance, Sophie, and Cuffee’s stories are told that I found it impossible to put down once it hit its stride.

[Cannonball review will post Oct 15, 2024]

Noni Reid has just graduated from high school and landed a great internship for the summer before college - as a theater costume-maker in Boston, recognized for her special talent. But her mother has different plans. Newly divorced and starting a position as the President of a prestigious liberal arts college in Virginia, she commands Noni with her for the summer and doesn't take any objections. And so Noni moves to Magnolia, to the Big house at the Tangleroot plantation, the same big house that her distant ancestor had once built for his enslavers. Resentful at first, Noni gradually gets interested in unveiling something about the former inhabitants of Tangleroot, even if the person whose history fascinates her most might be not someone her mother (a prominent Black studies historian, mind you) would approve.

Well, the above paragraph is basically what the annotation says, just in my own words. And based on that, I expected a much simpler trajectory in terms of the transformation a teen protagonist experiences during the novel. But this book was a real roller-coaster, and I mean it in the best sense. Instead of a simple dichotomy between succeeding in the modern world vs connecting to your roots that I might have imagined, this novel touches upon many much more intricate questions. I'll mention just one, as it surfaces quite early in the story, so as not to give away spoilers for something further into the plot: if your great-great-grandmother was an extraordinary seamstress who created a spectacular dress featured on a well-recognized portrait, would agreeing to make a replica of the dress be a chance to reconnect with your roots or would it rather make you complicit in an act of white-washing the "glorious past of the South"?

We all tell ourselves stories about who we are, partly based on who we imagine our ancestors to have been. But given how important these stories are to our identity... do we <i>really</i> want to know? The roots are indeed tangled in this one.

I really loved how Noni is written as a character. Her adolescent rebelling against anything her mother might suggest is just so great and veritable! (And I could really feel for her because of all the unfairness of the parenting decisions that she experienced. Very well-written POV!) The setting of a small middle-of-nowhere Virginia town is also very persuasive. You know, those towns where life seems to have stopped in the '50s and nowadays people mostly visit for the touristic promise to "experience the real South"? That's as far as contemporary imagery is concerned, where I can judge from personal experience. But you can also see how much effort is put into recreating the historical settings - and the author's note confirms what I was already guessing anyway, it was indeed a lot of research.

4.5 stars, with one half taken off for the too-frequent confusion when weeks seemed to have passed between paragraphs, without any signposting. Hope they'll typographically fix it in the final layout though.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC; the review above is my honest independent opinion.

Thank you to the author for the hours of research, heart, and personal experience that went into this story. As a white woman, I still felt able to connect with Noni. It also helped me to process my areas of growth. I love how books can help you experience someone else’s story, culture, challenges in a way that we may not be open to in discussion or in person. Challenge yourself to stand with Noni through her story.

Noni dreams of studying fashion and designing costumes for theater. When her mother gets a job in Virginia, Noni is dragged along for the summer she never wanted in a rural town, living in a plantation home. Noni’s mother teaches about black history, and as Noni settles in to the town, she slowly begins to want to learn more about her past, about her ancestors who slaved in this mansion, about her great-grandmother who loved fashion just like Noni.

Noni’s journey was really sweet, as she learns how to forgive herself for mistakes and understand who she really is. She learns a lot about herself as a person, as a newly-turned-18 adult, and as a black woman in a southern town. What I had a problem with was the mother. In the beginning of the novel, the mother is emotionally abusive, demanding too much of Noni and never seeing any of her positive traits. Based on how she was portrayed, the only happy ending should have been Noni finding independence, saying goodbye to her mother for good, and getting lots of therapy. Instead, the mother gets a redemption arc that is not deserved. While I think everyone can change for the better, the emotional abuse was swept under the rug as normal teen clashing with parent, which just wasn’t the case, and was really frustrating.

I just finished this book, like, ten minutes before writing this review, but I can already feel as though this book is gonna stick with me and my writing.

Complicated family trees and generational trauma are my bread and butter; hell, my planned debut's protagonist's genetic family tree is at the center of the story and the character's growth like Noni's. Only Williams took it several steps further when she introduces all these plot twists about the family over halfway through the story. I feel like this book should have been under the historical fiction genre, too, with how much the story focuses on Noni's thorough research of her family's history.

Williams gave a detailed author's note listing all the trips and real life research she did across two, almost three, decades, showing all the love and faith she had in her book. She even admitted to rewriting it, pointing out some aspects that she thought were bad. To talk about that so freely made me love this book a lot more, and the respect I have for Williams to push to release this book after cooking it for about three decades is endless.

Noni also was a fantastic protagonist. She starts off very bratty and looked down on the people of Magnolia, essentially boiling them down as "Southern hicks." She still felt grounded as a young emerging adult. There was a point in the story where her mom pulls her out of Boston University for a bad thing she said to a co-worker, and I felt so mad on her behalf. I really felt her pain of being suffocated in a town she hated but couldn't leave because she didn't have the financial means to leave herself. But in reality, that decision kept her in Magnolia, driving her forward to keep digging through her history when she would have forgotten if she had returned to Boston as originally planned. It goes to show that life can turn out for the better, even if it wasn't what we thought we wanted in the first place. I feel like I'm rambling here, but my main point here is that Noni is a strong but flawed main character whose dedication to searching for the truth made her all the more brilliant.

All in all, this really is such a great book. A story about history, especially in times where the worst kinds of people try to twist or bury it, is always needed in fiction, because it brings out a lot about ourselves we wouldn't know about, otherwise.

This is a great YA contemporary with an intense and unconventional mystery element. I appreciated the main character's development deeply as well as the way the book handled the legacy of slavery and contemporary racism in the South and 'liberal' academia. I will say, it was hard to come to terms with how the main character's mother ignored her daughter's wishes from the outset, but once you push past that the book is still incredibly rewarding, and it certainly deals with the parenting issues by the end.

Noni Reid is beyond upset when her mother, Dr. Radiance Castine, renowned scholar of Black literature, uproots her from their Boston home to move to a Virginia town. Noni had to give up a prestigious internship and hasn't forgiven her mother. To make matters worse they move into Tangleroot Plantation which enslaved people, including Noni's ancestor, Cuffee Fortune, built. Her mother is trying to find proof that Cuffee Fortune was also the founder of Stonepost College, a former black college. When Noni stumbles on an old gravesite of a woman with her same name, she finds herself wanting to know more. Along the way, she finds secrets that link back to the past and her own truth.

What worked: I love stories that involve family history which can be hard, difficult, and so rewarding. Noni at first is the reluctant protagonist who always felt she never was good enough for her mother. She wants to live her own life which is in theater as a costume designer. What's totally engaging about this story is when Noni looks for the truth that she knows no one is telling her. On this trail, she encounters some harsh truths and racism that still is alive today.

Noni's searching for the genealogy of her family opens up a Pandora's box of racism and ugly truths. Also, it scratches at the ugliness hidden by some that we continue to read about today. At the end, Noni and a few of her friends attend the Founder's Day event where she draws on courage to speak out against lies. This confrontation is strong and powerful.

I really loved the adventure and more than a few times I was taken off guard on some reveals. As someone who personally did my own search on an ancestor, I know how some aren't too happy and that some will try to sabotage the journey. The author does a great job of showing this with Noni. She even includes those old-time microfilm machines!

Noni's journey includes one of self-awareness and coming to terms with her own story. The relationship with others in the town of Magnolia is shown with those who are accepting and those not so much. Secrets thrive in the small Southern town. Noni's journey comes full circle at the end.

Coming-of-age contemporary story of a teen whose search for the truth behind a gravesite leads her to find out the truth of not only the town's Southern history but herself. Totally recommend!