What I’m Reading: The Girls in the Stilt House

I had seen this book in a couple of different places and thought it might be one I wanted to read…The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian.  I read enough about it to see that it was set in the south in the 1920s.  In general, that’s a period I enjoy reading about.

I put the book on my waitlist but then later saw that it was a free book offered from my Audible membership.  Audible has a new thing that allows members to download extra books from their catalog for free.  These books don’t count towards my allotted audiobooks.  It’s a great little added perk.  So I took it off my library waitlist and listened through Audible instead.

Did I like the book…it was good.  There were a few spots in the book that the author’s imagination went a little further than my own did, but all in all, it wasn’t too far.

Of course, there’s a mean father…a mean landlord…poor sharecroppers, tension between races, and unplanned pregnancy.

This is a debut novel so hopefully, this author will craft her story skills even more with her next book.

Here’s what Amazon has to say:
“Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don’t Rise.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.

Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she’s holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.

As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.”

Amazon readers gave the book 4.5 stars.  I’m going to give 4.2.  My main reason is I think I’m tired of books where everyone is so mean.  So many of the books I’ve read lately are full of terribly mean men.  I think I tire of that some.  Hmm.  I wonder if that’s why I’ve been listening to more podcasts and fewer books.

You can find the book HERE on Amazon.