For me this was about the complicated and messy relationships that mothers and daughters can sometimes have. None of the woman in this book had an easy life and each grabbed onto a lifeline to get through the hard knocks of life.

For Lula it was religion, for Justine it was men. This was like throwing oil on fire for their relationship.
The forces of nature was also a character all on its own with out of control wild fires, tornados and hard farm living impacting the lives of the characters.

There was a lot less “Cherokee” in the story than what I was expecting with only incidental mentions of the Native American culture. It’s a pity as I think that would have added another dimension to the story.

I can see this author has real talent but I can also see that this is a debut novel. With time I think she will find her stride and I have no hesitation read more of her work.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of Crooked Hallelujah.

In all honesty, I’m not quite sure what this book is about. I suppose that essentially it is about Lula, Justine, and Renee. They are three indigenous women who each battle their own demons. However, I found this novel to be very disjointed in its structure. Transitions between chapters and new characters being introduced left me with a sense of “What just happened?”. At several points in the book I need to re-read pages so that I truly understood what was unfolding. Hence, because of the lack of fluidity, I finally gave up on this book, seventy percent in. This is not to say that the book does not have any merit. The premise of the book seemed interesting enough however, the writing Simply did not hold my attention. I felt as though I was trudging through this novel, even though it was a fairly easy read with no difficult premise. Alas, I cannot give it more than two stars.

I enjoyed this one it was beautifully written and had engaging characters.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

I generally like historical family sagas, especially ones specifically about mothers and daughters, being both a mother and a daughter myself, and I love books Crooked Hallelujah was beautifully written, and I loved the characters, but it was a bit confusing as the timings of the chapters weren't defined, nor were the narrators. One chapter was narrated by someone who was almost not even mentioned beforehand in the book. Also, at one point she mentions the book It by Stephen King, at a time when I am pretty sure it hadn't been published yet. I'm a bit nit-picky about things like that, as they are so easily verifiable! I'm not sure if these things will be fixed by publishing time, so I'm going to hold off on posting to Goodreads until closer to the publishing date.

I would definitely try another book by this author in the future, this one just had too many small issues for me to love it.

Thank you for the ARC!