🎧 Book Review 🎧 Growing up in Maryland with so much history at our fingertips has been such a blessing and I cannot count the number of times we hopped over to Virginia for a day trip or long weekend for many more adventures. But there should be no denying that history has been white washed and as I have returned to sites that I visited growing up- from Mount Vernon to Monticello- I have been impressed by the effort to bring forth the story of the enslaved people. Kalela Williams brings this powerful movement to the younger generation in attempts to help educate and empower the next generation. While Tangleroot is a young adult book, it is absolutely beautiful and truly speaks to everyone. As Noni Reed’s quaint life in New England is uprooted to move to rural Virginia with her mother, she must face the ugly reality of the history of slavery and how it has shaped her own family’s past. Tangleroot is one of the most powerful reads of 2024 and is absolutely not to be missed!

At first, I wanted to read this book because I thought the cover was beautiful and I liked the summary of the book. The book, it is beautifully written. I love how it takes you through the journey of Noni learning about herself as a teenager/adult and also seeing herself in the way that her mom sees her. I love that her mom is also on a journey and you find out why the mom has been doing what she does due to what has taken place in the past.The inclusion of historical pieces makes the book even more special. I love historical fiction and this leans into that for me and still keeps the book relevant to young adults / adults interested in the topic.

Glad I got to read this E-ARC

This book was half modern day storytelling half historical fiction. One of the best parts of this book were the diaries and stories from the past. They were an unflinching look at the horrors of the past that we never need to forget. Mimi was a complicate character who I just felt for. Even though she could be rude and annoying at times I could understand how an 18 year old going through the trauma of the move and parents divorce could be this way. What I did not understand was why Radiance was so cruel to Noni. And I felt that was never truly addressed or resolved. Audiobook was SO well done!

This covered nothing new in terms of how America engages with its history when it comes to Slavery and how the South repaints their dark past of hate and just how intertwined family lines of Black and white people are. Williams has chosen to tell of a professor who is seeking to teach through education what truly is the inheritance of that past.

I wanted more communication between mother and daughter. It rankled that Radiance would do whatever it took to highlight issues that still run rampant in the South but refused to relay family history and more importantly her story to Noni.

I did appreciate how Noni grew in these pages and this is what kept me reading. It is an easy read and so many of what happened reflects what is happening and has been happening in America for decades.

4 ☆
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This cover art is everything! The plot was very interesting and kept me wanting more. I liked Nomi, the main female lead, but her mom could have gone jump in a lake! Her mom was an unlikable character. I thought it was kind of weird that they moved onto the plantations their ancestors were slaves on! That felt cringe to me. But overall, it was very well written.

The audiobook narrator did a great job telling the story. She was easy to listen to and understand.
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Thank you, Netgalley, and MacmillanAudio for the audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Content warning: racism, descriptions of enslavement, physical abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assault, hate crimes, murder, microaggressions

So, Dr. Radiance Castine is a piece of work, right? While I understand why she is the way she is (especially by the end of the novel when Noni learns the ugly truth of her mom's time in rural Virginia), I had a really hard time getting over how horrible she was to Noni. It seemed like she was doing everything possible to kill Noni's dreams and career opportunities all because it wasn't a path she understood or respected.

With that being said, I thought Noni's journey at Tangleroot while she explored her family history was really interesting. I didn't see all the twists coming either, which was exciting. Overall, this is not an easy book to read as Noni faces a lot of tough situations from everyone from family, to friends, to coworkers, to townsfolk. Williams does a really good job of illustrating how complicated the past can be and how people may be more connected than they thought.

I think this will do well with older teens who may want to explore the tough topics that are covered in this book and might open a conversation about identity and legacy.

Maggie Thompson does a good job with the audiobook narration.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Macmillan Young Listeners in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️4.5

I am not one to read the blurb often so I was very surprised when I actually started listening to what the story was about. When we are introduced to our FMC all I felt was rage for everything in her life. Her mom liked to control the narrative from deciding where Noni lives, works, attends college. I loathed her mother and the choices she took away from Noni. My opinion did change on her mother slightly near the end when we get the big reveals of the WHY. It changed my mind enough to understand and feel more towards her mother. It did not change my opinion on her taking choices away from Noni. Noni wholeheartedly deserved to live the life the way she wanted.

This story had me crying and gasping. If you enjoy YA coming of age stories, I recommend this one. Let your inner rage spread through the cracks as you read about the mistreatment of the POC characters in this book all the way from the past when slavery was still a common to the present where white folk "did no wrong" and continue to try and establish the same mistreatment. Noni just blossoms throughout this story and the ending I was crying tears of joy for her family and her.

Tangleroot is going to be forever engraved in my brain.

Thank you McMillian Audio and Netgalley for the ALC!

First off, many thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this book as an audio ARC! I greatly appreciate it!
It was all right. It was fine.
Man, though, Noni is one of the most obnoxious characters I've ever read. Listen to your mother, girl! Jeez! She's doing what she thinks is best for you! I get that a character needs negative traits to overcome for a proper character arc, but being this much of a spoiled brat is going a little overboard.
Radiance isn't much better, but at least she's trying.
Points also go to the narrator and her accents, which I greatly appreciate.
The writing's quite good, and the plot is interesting, and I liked a lot of the background characters, but Noni's constant complaining ruins it.
Three out of five stars for Tangleroot.

I am thankful to have gotten the audio ALC for free from Netgalley and Macmillan Audio (young listeners) so I can leave my voluntary review.

This is a YA novel which does take a little bit to get engaged with but when you do you want to keep on reading.

I listened to the audiobook at 1.75x speed rate. Why? It was needed for me. At that rate I thought the narrator was great! However at regular speed it is painfully slow and drawn out. At 1.75x you would usually be able to tell that it was sped up a bunch but you could not in this case. So while the narrator was a joy to listen to you will need to find the speed that works for you to fully enjoy the book.

As for the plot.. it’s an important book where the consumer can experience the racism that the FMC Noni both faces and uncovers herself throughout the book. Noni has lived a very different life in New England and when her mother moves down to rural Virginia for a job it is a huge culture shock and education for her. Throughout the book she was able to learn and experience all the history and lessons that her mother has taught her since she was little. She also learned her personal history which her mother kept from her.

While the book may take a bit to get into and be a subject matter that teens may not want to tackle, it’s an important book and would be great for a class or summer reading list.

The book comes out on October 15th 2024

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars and I rarely round up.

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again

I was drawn to this book based on the cover (i mean look at it!!). I was a bit nervous to read it since it is slightly outside my usually genres.

Overall it's a really well written book. The plot itself was really interesting, the book kept my interest from start to finish. I really liked our main character Noni. I really didn't like her mother, Noni is 18 she's allowed to chose where she wants to go for university!! Radiance was incredibly emotionally abusive towards Noni and it was all simply ignored/accepted. I can't rate this more than 3 stars due to the way the whole mother/daughter relationship actually played out.

the audiobook was well done! Loved the narrator.

I highly recommend this book--for people who enjoy coming of age stories, historical fiction, or family drama. The author handles some sensitive topics with brutal honesty but also care. This book is written from several perspectives, and the section written from the teenage daughter of the slave-owning plantation owner is heavy. I had to take a break while reading that section because I was so mad at people who have that mindset. The writing was real and honest, and it makes you feel things.

The novel follows a high school graduate who is relocated from Boston where life seems great to her mom's hometown in rural Virginia where her life seems to be falling apart. The main character is trying to figure out who she is away from her friends and outside of her mom's shadow. Living in the plantation where her ancestors were enslaved gives her plenty to consider as she faces both systemic racism and microagressions in the new community where she lives. She also finds herself drawn into the history of the plantation, called Tangleroot, when she finds some fashion drawings from the original inhabitants and her ancestors.

I was given early access to the audiobook in exchange for my honest review, and my opinion is that everyone should read this book and feel all the feels. It's a great book that explores our country's history and the modern consquences of our ancestor's actions.

A complex, emotional coming of age story that doesn't shy away from difficult topics.

The summer before her eagerly awaited college debut, Noni's mother moves her many states away to live in a plantation house connected with their history. Noni dreams of studying fashion design and is determined not to put down roots in this temporary rural home. She chafes under the shadow of her brilliant mother even as she begins picking away at old mysteries involving her family and the town.

The small southern town where Noni ends up has a history just as jagged as her family tree. The more she learns about the people who lived there years ago and their current descendants, the more she has to wrestle with her own ethical boundaries. What violates her personal sense of justice? Can people change? And how will learning these truths change her?

The complicated family history Noni uncovers is a fascinating (albeit heartbreaking and infuriating) thread of mystery throughout this story. The truths about slavery and lineage are all too familiar and yet all too often unacknowledged. The many people whose lives she researches are a little difficult to keep track of if I'm being honest - I would love for the physical copy of the book to have a family tree if only it could be done without spoilers.

Speaking of complicated - the relationship between Noni and her mom Radiance is thorny and layered. Noni feels unseen beside her powerhouse of a mother, who wants very much to have Noni follow in her footsteps. They clearly love each other even when they can't always get along with one another. Some of their conflict arises from regular parent/teen clashes, but some of it feels more serious in a concerning way. Radiance moves Noni around like an accessory based on Radiance's schedule, completely ignoring what is important in her teenage daughter's life. Radiance blocks every effort Noni makes to pursue fashion, forcing her to enroll in classes of Radiance's choice at community college in rural VA instead. There's no remorse for Radiance's trampling of her daughter's autonomy, and the story's resolution sees Noni finding value in being her mother's mini-me.

There's also a bit of an odd situation with Noni and another girl that feels blown out of proportion. Noni says something hurtful and offensive to a girl in town. Radiance is absolutely livid, remonstrating her daughter for using a slur - which, news to me? - and punishing her by refusing to let her attend the college of her choice in the fall. That fallout is hugely disproportionate to the page time given the aftereffects of an actual slur being used early in the book. Noni follows up her mistake with genuine remorse and anxiety, unfortunately in the form of a clearly unwanted apology and plea for forgiveness. It's an honest misstep for a teenager and one she learns from, and the revulsion and disgust with which her actions are treated feels outsized. I honestly don't know if it's a me thing or a book thing though, so please draw your own conclusions.

Maggie Thompson does a good job with the narration for the audiobook version of Tangleroot. If you have the option, audio is a great way to read this story!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an audio ARC in return for my honest review.

This was a solid debut! You could really tell that Kalela Williams is a historian. Noni is such a well-developed and real/relatable main character, a face of teenage angst and rebelliousness. I could understand her resentment against her parents (mainly her mom) for moving her from New England to small town Virginia (with a very ugly past and present) over the summer and THEN forcing her to withdraw from Boston University in the fall and enroll in a VA community college instead. The lack of agency you experience as a teenager and young adult feels so unfair when you want to make your own choices and mistakes. I can't tell you how angry it made me as a teenager to constantly be told, "I know what's best for you." UGH. So frustrating!!

This book grapples with the lingering effects of slavery in the South. Noni encounters so many racist white people (who really know how to "disguise" their racism in backhanded, intentional ways). It shows how harmful denying history/our past is.

The book really speeds up at the 75 percent mark. Like seriously, so much is revealed in that last 25 percent, it was almost overwhelming. I imagine that's how Noni felt when she made the same discoveries, but I did have a hard time keeping up, especially since I was listening to the audio. I'm still not sure I got everything that happened. I really liked the narrator, but I will say that listening to JUST the audio was challenging. I had trouble keeping track of all the minor side characters (sometimes I was like, "why don't we like this person again?"). I feel like doing a tandem read with the physical/digital would have been helpful and less confusing, especially when reading journal entries from the past or hearing flashbacks.

I want to share my (spoiler-free) favorite quotes from the book (I'm quoting an ARC, so it's subject to change, and as I am quoting from the audio, the punctuation might be off. Emphasis is my own!):

It didn't feel fair. White plantation girls got such a good rap. It's like they were silk-clad myths, hustling through the halls of history. They were portrayed with no power or agency, as if white womanhood was slavery light, or there was some fabricated sisterhood between white women and Black servants, of gossip and giggles during hair brushing and corset lacing. Worse, there was a merging of those two untruths, that Black and white women were sisters striding together for freedom from the patriarchy. When our patriarchies were separate and unequal. ... Saying a slave holder was a product of their time implied there was only one way to be, that the year we were born fixed us in some snow globe of perception. But people were as prismatic as glitter, falling differently every time you shook the glass. ... There might have been a hundred ways to be a product of one's time. There must be still.

And two, I thought of the barren flowerbed that once held Robert E. Lee riding through an intended forever of all we raise high on pedestals. There are monuments poured from metals or carved from marble or chiseled into mountains. There are the simpler monuments dedicated to lives on earth, like the one I knelt in front of. And there are the monuments we create from nothing but the air of our imaginations, when we shape the truth of history into a fable. Eras become tales with a story arc. History becomes a story that places the reader at some contrived resolution, the way even the most sobering of museums deposit guests at the gift shop.

Ugh so, so good!!! We can't defend our slave holding ancestors by saying they were "products of their time." Because that implies that during their time, slavery was okay just because it was "legal." I just thought the writing in these paragraphs was beautiful.

My biggest gripe is that there is apparently an Author's Note in the digital book, but it's not there in the audio format (unless I missed it, but I don't think I did, since I tried searching both the beginning and end of the recording and... nothing). At first, I just thought there wasn't an Author's Note but found out through other early reviews that there is. This might be fixed in the final audio version (I hope Kalela Williams herself narrates it). But it makes me sad I couldn't experience it for myself, since I was/am so curious about the research and background that went into this book!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the advanced copy of this book!

I'll be honest, I requested this book because I love the cover. But I listened to the audiobook and found it to be absolutely captivating. Tangleroot is a YA coming-of-age novel that is largely about what it's like to do genealogical research as an African American.

Noni has grown up in her mothers shadow and feels kind of suffocated by the expectation that she follow in her footsteps. Her mom is a well-respected scholar of African-American history & literature and has just taken over as the head of a small liberal arts college in her hometown. So the summer before Noni is set to begin college, she is dragged away from her home in Boston and a desirable internship in costuming to live in the plantation house where her ancestors were enslaved. And she hates it. But as time goes on, she begins to do her own research into her family history and the history of the people who owned the plantation. Along the way she uncovers long held, sometimes painful secrets, but also finds her place in the world as a young woman.

Noni is a complex and well-drawn character. She's not perfect, but you viscerally feel her anger and frustration at her moms control of her life. And yet, there's a lot she doesn't know and lot she needs to learn. This book tackles racism of varying degrees both historically and in the modern day. It lays out a lot of important history that is sometimes glossed over because it's painful or difficult. And it pushes back on false narratives of enslaved people being treated kindly or like "family". And the messiness of family trees when you look at too common occurrence of sexual assault and unequal relationships.

This is an incredibly impressive debut novel and I could not put it down. I hope it gets into the hands of many young people! The audio narration is excellent and engrossing. I received an audio review copy via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.