Kate’s Review: “Strange Folk”

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Book: “Strange Folk” by Alli Dyer

Publishing Info: Atria Books, August 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher at ALAAC24.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: A woman returns to her estranged, magical family in Appalachia but when a man is found dead in the woods nearby, it seems the family has conjured something sinister in this lush, shimmering, and wildly imaginative debut novel that is perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Deborah Harkness, and Sarah Addison Allen.

Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her new life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.

Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have summoned something dark.

As she and her family search for answers, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power in order to protect her family and the town she couldn’t leave behind.

Review: Thank you to Atria books for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

One of the panels I attended at ALAC24 was a preview of upcoming thriller titles with the authors at hand to describe their books. One of the books that caught my attention was “Strange Folk” by Alli Dyer, which had not only a fantasy element to the thriller story, but also involved a family of healers in the mountains of Appalachia that has used nature and their powers to help those around their community, as well as stirred up some trouble here and there when using those powers. We all know that this is the exact kind of story I am an absolute sucker for, so I was very excited to read this book, my hopes being pretty high.

In terms of the witchiness themes and lore I did find a lot I liked in this book. I was definitely getting some hints and homages to “Practical Magic” as a reluctant woman from a line of healers and supposed ‘witches’ returns to her Appalachia home with her children after a nasty divorce. Lee’s homecoming and reintegration into the town was really fun to watch unfold, as she starts to reconnect with her grandmother Belva, a well respected healer, and starts to interact with the land again and how it can bind and heal, and sometimes take and harm. I absolutely loved the descriptions of the spells, charms, tinctures, etcetera of the women in this family, and the various rituals that they would partake in in hopes of helping and healing. And the Appalachia setting makes for an even more unique lens, with Lee’s family being mountain folk who have hidden away from general society and made their own way, being trusted by some and feared by others. I honestly kept thinking about Misty Day in “American Horror Story: Coven” with her connection to nature and her more ‘folksy’ (for lack of a better term) traditions. This interpretation of witches really worked for me in this story, as I love a story with powerful women doing magic, or something like it.

But that kind of leads to why this didn’t work as well for me, and that is because unlike in “Practical Magic” I didn’t really become attached to any of the characters at hand. A lot of them had some promising backstories, traits, and personalities, but I never fully enjoyed them and never quite believed that they got to what I was hoping they would be. Whether it was our main character Lee, who had some great build up but then didn’t quite get past the building blocks of her character except to be like ‘oh no I guess we will stay because this is my home’, or her mother Redbud, who was consumed by a guilty conscience and then became a drug addict and traumatized her daughter, we had so many things that could have been explored…. but then just didn’t quite get the exploration I was hoping for. I don’t really need characters like this to be likable, but I at least want them to be interesting even if I can’t really root for them. And I had a VERY hard time with the dynamic between Lee and Redbud, and how it felt like there was probably a lot of grace and forgiveness when all was said and done without the amount of atonement that I REALLY needed from her. And by the time we got some answers and reveals about what was going on, I was more happy that we were wrapping up as opposed to actually getting fulfilling answers.

I had higher hopes for “Strange Folk”, and while the concept, setting, and lore worked for me, I wanted from from our cast of mountain witches and their loved ones. I think it would be a good choice for the upcoming Autumn, however.

Rating 6: A strong premise and some interesting folk lore makes for a cool concept, but I wasn’t as invested in the characters.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Strange Folk” isn’t on many specific Goodreads lists but I think if you like books like “Practical Magic” and other magical family sagas this could be a good match.