A love story between a man and his son, who died too soon, this story is narrated by the unnamed father who talks to his son throughout the novel alternating between coping with Malcolm’s death, remembrances of times past with Malcolm, memories from the narrator’s own childhood, and interactions with the everyday.

Throughout you see the father try to come to terms with his new reality and gradually learning from his son a different way of looking at the world. After inheriting land from his white grandfather, which was meant for Malcolm, the novel takes an unexpected turn as bodies are discovered on the land that was once a plantation.

There were parts of this book that made me tear up, parts that made me upset, that made me shake my head, and still others that brought laughter. But that’s the way it is with grief. It brings on all the feels at any given moment and the more we push against those feelings, the harder it is to accept. Ultimately a story of healing and coming to terms with one’s past and how we can move forward despite this, “Devil is Fine” is a deeply evocative literary novel.

There are some bizarre occurrences in this novel that I’ll attribute to mixing medications and alcohol (I felt these were surreal though as the novel wraps up connections and some explanations are made), and a ghost component which reveals itself in (in)opportune times providing the narrator and reader with moving insight into the plantation itself.

I alternated between the ebook and audiobook. There were some passages that lent themselves better to reading the words on the page rather than listening so I could better absorb them (pretty sure this was a me being distracted thing), though I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Dion Gram as audio book narrator and will definitely look for more titles he has narrated.

#bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booknerd #bookgeek #johnvercher #devilisfine #literaryfiction #familylife #magicalrealism #grief #booksaboutgrief #booksthatheal

“I don’t know how to weigh loss
But I do know how heavy it is.”

“You don’t stop being afraid of things when you become a parent. You stop showing your fear the way you used to is all.”

I don’t know what I think about this book and that rarely ever happens to me. Usually I know my star rating from almost the beginning. But this one was…a bit weird. I almost dnf’d it at 50% and then again at about 70% and the only thing that kept me going was that I wanted to know how Malcom died.

The writing is absolutely beautiful and the style is a bit different and fresh. But the story itself dragged for me and had some elements where my lack of ability to suspend disbelief really tripped me up. But overall it’s a very powerful story with a beautiful message.

Unfortunately I was on the struggle bus with this audiobook even though the narrator used a lot of emotion. I mean, it was just oozing out of him. But I had a very hard time hearing him. His cadence would be loud and then very soft and unless I was somewhere with complete silence I would miss whole phrases which became very frustrating. Due to this I ended up reading the majority of this with my eyes.

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, Celadon Books, and the author for the ALC and ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

DEVIL IS FINE by John Vercher and narrated by Dion Graham is one of the best books I have read this year.

I feel profoundly inept to express why this is such an incredible story.

The biracial narrator begins this journey at a funeral, speaking to the one who died. He does this throughout the novel as he processes this grief, all while going to and claiming a plantation left by sorts to him through the death of his white grandfather. We slip back through memories to understand how we got here, and at times slip elsewhere, but that is telling too much.

There are deeply moving meditations on being biracial, a father, a writer of Color, legacy, responsibility, & transformation. It encompassed all emotions, whipping from heartbreak to hilarity, and from heavy realism to a very blurred sense of surreal. I loved it all. This was an incredible feat of storytelling with gorgeously written prose.

I was so grateful to receive both the digital ARC from @celadonbooks & the audio from @macmillan.audio through @netgalley and the combination was superb. I may even go get a hard copy of this one as it will definitely be a favorite. This does publish on June 18th, and a pre-order would be worth it.

The audiobook was next-level. All of the emotional outpouring of this man came through in a way that made me feel it. I was wrecked, I was scared, I was searching, and I was transforming with him.

Wow! This was a book I didn’t know I needed to read.

This is a devastatingly raw narration of a biracial novelist to his son Malcolm, who passed away at seventeen.

The novelist, who is never named, is deep in the throes of grief. You will hear his regrets and guilt; they literally drip from his voice. He also speaks of the issues with the publishing industry and his struggles as a biracial man.

Another shock comes when he receives a letter from an attorney stating that his white grandfather left him an oceanfront estate. It seems surprising. But then, the nightmare, skeletons are found on the property - those of slaves.


I can’t honestly do this book justice in this small space. The writing is fantastic. Our narrator's struggles, thoughts, and emotions are vivid and almost tangible. He is flawed, but he lives in a tainted world. The visions took me back at first, but then I found them to be a powerful addition - is he losing his mind, or is it a symptom of grief and anguish? All things circle back to him and his son, and what happened, the mistakes made, the rejection, the loss.

If you have the chance to listen to this audiobook, I highly recommend it. Dion Graham’s narration is fantastic - incredibly emotive.

This book has many weighty topics, yet I was so enraptured by the story that I could not put it down.

Leaning towards 4.5 ⭐️

Thank you @celadonbooks for this gifted book.
Thank you @macmillan.audio for the gifted audiobook.

This one was odd. But it was also interesting and moving. With the journey through grief and then finding out something about your past you never expected, made this a very intriguing read. I binged it in one day and the audio definitely made that possible. There were some LONG chapters. But I enjoyed the structure since this was written almost like a letter to the MMCs recently deceased son. This book did discuss some heavy topics such as racism and slavery but when it is mixed with a little magic realism, it made for a really good read.

I am really thankful to Celadon, John Vercher, and Macmillan Audio for granting me advanced access to this audiobook before June 18, 2024. I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't for me.

When I saw that Dion Graham was narrating John Vercher’s new book, I clicked request immediately! However, for some reason, I feel like this book would have been better in print than on audio. This is a powerful story of a bi-racial man coming to terms with inheriting a plantation after the death of his son. The entire novel feels like a fever dream, flowing between past and present, real life and dreams. I look forward to rereading the book when my copy comes in the mail after publication. As much as I love Dion Graham’s narration for other works, I would pick up this book in print.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to @NetGalley for letting me listen to the advanced audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Wow wow wow. This book was emotional, heart breaking and dark. The main character had to question his identity as a black man, a dad, a son, a religious man. He wamted to find a healthy emotional, physical and mental state after the death of his son. It was beautifully written with poetic passages and real honest come to jesus moments that had me crying. The fantasy elements added depth and symbolism to the story which I loved, I highly recommend.

A father fighting to understand his own ethnicity as a biracial man in a culture that loves to limit people to simple definitions. A man that has lost everything he believes in. A man who is watching his life’s work be reduced and diminished. A man that falls into the abyss of alcohol, ghosts, and guilt… all come together in this powerful and haunting tale of loss and re-emergence. With call back imagery throughout that is unmistakable and unique this is a tale that while linear in structure loves to twist and double back.

Vercher does try to lift the mood in multiple places with humor. Sometimes this works, but often he can’t let the joke stand, and doubles or triples down on it. Which took me out of the narrative. Overall this is a strong tale of love, loss, and the legacy of slavery in the NE that is often ignored.

<i>Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.</i>

This felt like <i>Don't Cry For Me</i> by Daniel Black and <i>Erasure</i> by Percival Everett, if you squint. For the most part, I really liked this. I loved the grief, the family aspects, and the very weird magical realism bits. This did take me awhile to get into though. It's a slow book, but it picks up a bit with its wry humor and strange but compelling imagery. I struggled a bit with the audiobook narrator but the interesting writing style made me push through.

Overall I thought this was a good read. The storyline was a little bit hard for me to follow as an audiobook but that's mostly my own fault of being distracted. I liked the fantastical elements to the story as well as the way the narrator talks to his son.

Thank you to Celadon Books, MacMillan Audio and Netgalley for the ARC/ALC!

Our narrator, a Biracial Black man, is reeling from the sudden death of his teenage son. One. Day, he receives a letter from an attorney stating he just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather. So he travels to a beach town south of where he is currently living and finds much more than he expected. He is stunned to find out he is now the owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his mother’s side of the family. This alone is difficult, but combine it with the strange experiences he begins to have while there, ends for shocking results.

I feel like this story deserves its own moment of silence; it was just that profound. The emotion was raw and thought-provoking and although I tend to stay away from “heavy” reads, I am so glad I gave this one a listen. John Vercher expertly blurred the lines of reality and fiction, in a way that reminded of Gabino Iglesis’ “Devil Takes You Home”. I am in awe of how well message of this story - the difficulty our narrator faced as a Black man, becoming a plantation owner - was embedded in every bit of the story, as he struggled to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Interspersed with bits of dark humor, this story will stay with me for a LONG time. It deserves each and every star! I look forward to seeing what John Vercher does next!

On audio, Dion Graham was PERFECTION! He perfectly embodied these characters and brought them to life. If you listen to audiobooks, you know what I mean when you hear “the voice” - one that causes you to automatically look for audiobooks read by the same narrator. I eagerly am doing the same for Dion Graham.

”Devil is Fine” releases June 18, 2024. This review will be shared to my instagram blog (@books_by_the_bottle) shortly :)

Devil is Fine by John Vercher is a literary fiction novel that explores many different themes. This book is essentially about a man struggling to come to terms with his grief after the death of his son. He talks to his dead son and reflects on his life. While I did feel empathy for the main character I did struggle to find him likeable. He was so stuck in his grief that he came across as self absorbed at times. I did enjoy the progression of the plot. There was almost no point where I could predict what would happen next. I liked the unexpected twists. I did get bored throughout the story but the excellent writing was enough to keep me interested until the end.

If you're looking for a deep and thoughtful story with themes of grief, family tragedy, fatherhood, race, and a little bit of the paranormal then Devil is Fine is for you!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the alc in exchange for an honest review.

DEVIL IS FINE
John Vercher

What does it feel like when someone is trying to suffocate you while exploiting you, all the while denying its very existence?

John Vercher has some ideas.

He is in a vortex of grief. All his sentences contain the letter “I.” In all of his stories, he is the hero, at every event, the main attraction. He is concerned with how he feels, how things affect him, and how things interact with his environment. At this point in his mourning, he cannot see outside of the boundaries of himself.

He is not living in the present, unable to go back to the past, he lingers somewhere in between the horrors of yesterday and the ones sure to come tomorrow. Days after burying his sons he receives word that he has inherited a house. Not just any house but a plantation. Not just any plantation but one that his white ancestors owned.

Uncomfortable with this gift, unsure how to proceed, when he finds out the history of the plantation and its prior owners, all bets are off and a reckoning happens. We get to follow along.



God’s have big ego’s, angels are deceiving and ghosts are welcome guests. The sooner you realize the DEVIL IS FINE and comes dressed in a three-piece suit the sooner you’ll realize the scariest things in life come wrapped in boxes made of shimmering gold. If grief were an ever-present state, we would all die a lonely death. Full of regrets of having ever loved at all.

I had trouble with the audiobook. The narration felt cacophonous with one word beginning before the last one ending. Words tripped over each other, and the importance of the sentence being held within the first and second half languished like a whisper. I was much more comfortable reading with my eyes for this material.

Thanks to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Celadon Books for all the advanced copies!

DEVIL IS FINE…⭐⭐⭐⭐

Unfortunately, I don’t think this one worked for me. The blurred lines between real life and imagined happenings were a bit much for me. I found them difficult to untangle and follow along with. This could have been because I did this one of audio; it’s possible that the physical read would have been a better fit for this one.

OUT June 2024 for Celadon Books

Thank you so much Celadon Books for sending me a physical copy and to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audiobook.

John Vercher pulls off the incredible feat of writing a poetic novel that is also funnier than I could ever be — yet somehow so real in its dialogue. It’s profound and clever, with a palpable humility.

Each theme is richly layered and complex; most profoundly, identity. A father, writer, and a bi-racial man we watch as our flawed and empathetic main character navigates the loss of his teenage son and the nuances of their relationship and the complicated history of his family and slavery.

This one really touched me, got me thinking and I definitely want to read more from him in the future. Dreamlike (or more nightmare even) this walks the line of supernatural and reality, to provoke the true sense of the revelations. With a terrific side character and heart wrenching discovers it’s so worth the read!

I read this as a tandem read (physical and audio) and it was a terrific experience. I really loved the narrator for the audio.

This work of literary fiction explores themes of loss, grief, fatherhood, religion, and race. While this is a lot to explore, I feel like the author did it all justice without losing the characters or it becoming bogged down. The story is told in an interesting way, in first person with the narrator speaking to “you,” who his deceased son.

I couldn’t decide if it begins to stray into light magical realism around halfway through the book or if there was a more logical explanation that I won’t mention due to spoilers. While this caught me by surprise, I think it was a great way to include the deeply engrained trauma that was a theme of this work. That being said, it does get weird. I really liked getting to follow this story from the narrator’s fascinating perspective and how he had feet on both sides of the fence in many different aspects that this book explores.

-- Just a quick aside that I feel obligated to make as an archaeologist in the U.S.: we will NEVER take your private property from you! I know that it needed to happen for the plot in this book, but if you invite us onto your property to help you identify things or learn about the past, we won’t steal from you (also, we legally can’t, so if someone does try to you can get state/federal laws involved!). I just wanted to make a note of this as we run across folks all the time who think if they tell us about anything interesting that they’ve found on their property that we’re going to imminent domain it. --

I really wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this book as I was reading it, but it was a fascinating journey with solid depth that will leave me pondering things for a while. I also found the ending wonderfully satisfying. If you’re interested in somewhat experimental literary fiction with heavy themes that are handled well, you’ll love this one. Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to read this work, which will be published June 18, 2024. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Devil Is Fine is a supremely creative and engaging look at identity, redemption, and haunting. A half-Black, half-White professor/novelist finds both his academic and authorial careers in jeopardy due to both is personal crises and shifting cultural expectations of what a "Black" novel should be in respect to identity, appeal to White gaze, etc.
However these difficulties pale in comparison to coping with the loss of his teenage son, further estrangement from his son's mother, and the mysterious inheritance of land from the White side of his family that was meant for the son.
This brings him into contact with small town Mid-Atlantic bartender/realtor and her group, and they spar and bond as strange things begin to surface in both him and the land.
This is a very compelling novel exploring coping with the horrors of the recent and distant past and how that may manifest in the body and mind.

This one hit me deep. A character-driven masterpiece narrated by the phenomenal Dion Graham. The story follows a grieving father after the loss of his son. His world is shattered, and his only solace is his sometimes quirky humor, which the narrator, Dion Graham portrays perfectly. When he inherits a plantation, things take a surprising turn.

This isn't your typical plantation story. The author blends the real and imagined, past and present, to create a unique exploration of grief, race, and family legacy. It gets a little weird at times (hello, paranormal!), but that's part of the book's charm. It's ultimately a beautiful story about healing and confronting the past. Every time I see a jellyfish, I will be forever reminded of this book.

This wasn't fully my style of story/writing, but enough here worked for me to give it 4 stars. And I totally understand the folks who give it 5 stars because the quality of the writing is great.

The story is about a biracial man whose teen son has very recently died. Over the course of the book you get flashbacks of their relationship as the father processes his grief, his feelings about his own father, and his feelings about his biracial identity. The story does get a bit weird and surreal at points, so you'll be better off if you can enjoy that.

It's hard not to compare this book at least somewhat to Erasure/American Fiction by Percival Everett. Both books have Black academic writers as their MCs, and in both books the writers are struggling to get what they want to write published - though their problems are on opposite ends of the spectrum. In Erasure his books aren't Black enough, and in Devil is Fine they're too Black. A nice catch-22. In any case, I really enjoy the academic/publishing satire of both books as someone who works in academia.

Another layer to the story is the property the narrator inherits. I liked this part a lot though it takes a good while to get going. It's weird because the story treats it as a reveal of sorts, but the fact that the author inherited a plantation is in the synopsis... I don't think it should be in the synopsis since it isn't revealed in the book until 45% of the way in.

I really liked how the flashbacks to the plantation echoed the narrator's attitude toward his son and religion. At least, that's how I read it. It was dark and powerful. Each memory of the narrator with his son was so, so painful. Really well written with believable dialogue and feelings. Very, very provoking and upsetting. I was so frustrated with the narrator and wanted to shake him for all his bad parenting choices. Unlikable protagonist warning on this one.

I think the women are FAR too nice to the narrator given his behavior. That made me roll my eyes a good bit. ;) They just keep coming to his rescue...

One thing that frustrated me about the story was the fact that the "how" of the son's death was withheld until the end. I'm not a fan of reveals that feel unnecessary or false to the voice of the story. The story is in first person, you're telling me the father never thinks about how his son died? You could argue that he doesn't want to dwell on it, but then he'd at least comment on not wanting to dwell on it. I was left guessing - police shooting? No, there would be some kind of case or charges or protest discussed. Suicide? No, the father would be asking himself "why??" and he's not. Overdose? No, the son doesn't seem to have a drug problem... I thought it was silly to withhold the "how" without providing some sort of narrative of avoidance from the father.

I listened to the story via audiobook, which unfortunately wasn't a *great* experience. I appreciate the effort the audiobook narrator put into it because he wasn't bland. But his volume varied a lot so I couldn't hear some things without changing my volume - always annoying as an audiobook listener. He also put a lot of emotion in his reading at times which in theory was good, but I often wanted it to be toned down. That's my personal preference; I imagine for other listeners that will be a strength.

Stories of parenthood and grief over a lost child are not usually of interest to me (sounds heartless, I'm sorry), but this story had enough other elements to work for me. I also thought the flashbacks to father and son interactions were so well written that I was engaged in their story despite myself!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.