This was…. pretty weird. It wasn’t really fantasy, or straight fiction. I wanted to know more about the vine, where it came from, how it worked, did it have any purpose that wasn’t sinister. But I never really found out and was left feeling unsatisfied.

Joanie and her foster siblings live on a farm in rural Virginia. They are responsible for a mysterious vine cultivating and performing sacred rituals to make it grow. After an arranged marriage that went horribly wrong, leaving her as a widow with a baby, Joanie is ploying her escape. Desperate for answers, Joanie went to the vine, learning it was more powerful than she realized, and started to do old rituals to help find her son.

I was intrigued by the pretty cover and the premise, but I did not realize what I was getting myself into. There was a lot of dark, triggering topics that were incorporated in a way that I felt uncomfortable reading. I almost DNF this book a few times, but I tortured myself to see how the story would end. Nothing about this book appealed to me, and I would not recommend this book to anyone


Thank you to Netgallery and to Harlequin Publishing for giving me a copy of the book.

This one absolutely did not live up to the expectations I had after reading the blurb. Instead of a magical tale, this novel goes incredibly dark with topics ranging from child abuse to drug addiction. The plot was was hard to follow, and it left me incredibly disappointed.

I definitely judged this book by it's cover, and it did not payoff.

Though I think that the plot and the overall characters started off in a good place, by the end, I found it difficult to want to keep reading. I just think that this book wasn't for me.

An interesting tale that mixes together themes of foster parenthood, child abuse, and magic. Thankfully, good does overcome evil in this tome. Well with your time - give it a read.

Daughters of the Wild was one of my favourite books this year. I highly recommend this novel if you are looking for something to captivate you with phenomenal writing.

Natalka Burian starts with an interesting underlying plot: a magic (or possibly alien?) vine is tended by a group of foster children for the benefit of the Joseph family in mountains of West Virginia. The vine is imbued with magical properties and must be harvested under the direction of a woman with a connection to the vine. The children harvest the plant ceaselessly for the tyrannical Joseph family who then process and sell the vine. However, Burian fails to deliver on almost everything interesting aspect of this plot.

There is little explanation of either the exact nature of the vine or of the exact nature of its connection to main character Joanie. The foster children live in what seems like abject misery under the rule of both abusive foster parents Letta and Sil and the overall terrifying reign of the Joseph family. Plot points are introduced seemingly at random (there is a baby; then there isn't a baby, suddenly members of the Joseph family are either all-powerful or incredibly weak, there's a whole subplot about ginseng) and not explored in any interesting or meaningful way. Overall, I think this book really missed the mark, and I do not recommend it.

Daughters of the Wild is a dark, magical story about a group of foster children living on a farm in the backwoods of West Virginia. The children are forced to work on a farm, but girls who have reached puberty are taught to cultivate the mysterious Vine of Heaven. They bond with the plant who tells them what it needs. Joanie, one of the older fosters, is forced into an arranged marriage and soon becomes pregnant. When the marriage goes terribly wrong, she turns to fellow foster and best friend, Cello and the two plan to take the baby and escape. The baby goes missing before they can break free of this horrible place and Joanie's only recourse is to turn to the plant for help. This book was very well written, but it is dark. Children are abused and forced to work and are sorely neglected. Young girls are forced into marriage - all for the sake of cultivating this Vine. The adults fostering the kids use religious beliefs to force the girls to perform rituals to nurture the plant - giving the whole place the feel of a cult. A good book but definitely not a happy one.

This book really pulled me in and I found myself thinking about it when I was away from it and wanting to know what happened next. While I really enjoyed the characters, especially Joanie and Cello whose POVs we see through, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. Some of the negative reviews I see seem to involve a misunderstanding of magical realism, and that’s not where my problem is. Rather, I expected the ending to be empowering for the characters, and while it felt realistic, it was kind of a bummer. I wanted a lot more for them and more than they clearly wanted for themselves. While it’s an engrossing read, it’s not a feminist masterpiece, and it deals with some tough topics like child abuse (mostly through forced labor). On the plus side, I really enjoyed the characters and how all of the plot connected so seamlessly. My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for giving me a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I wanted to love this book because it sounded magical and empowering of women.
The idea for this story was solid but not executed as well as it could have been. It’s implied to be about a magical vine that relies on women for it’s growth. We don’t understand early on what that means of the women tasked with the vine’s upkeep, and after finishing the book it’s still not very clear to me. After a young woman has her cycle, her responsibility to the vine changes with rituals. The ritual is not as detailed as I’d expected from this story. This story is not about the daughters of the family.

Ultimately, this story is about a dysfunctional family living like a cult on a rural farm. Children are placed on the farm by foster care and then grossly mistreated. The story focuses more on a boy named Cello than the daughter named Joanie. In less frequent moments spent in Joanie’s perspective she is intensely focused on using the vine to find her son, this at least was true to the synopsis. Despite all of her time on the vine and pushing her worship of it to her physical limits, I kept trying to understand the “why” of the vine.

More time should be spent in the high-stakes moments of the story.
There are quick and abrupt shifts in the story that needed more time. Cello has a big revelation about himself that occurs way too fast to feel true to the character. When an important character dies, a tense environment suddenly shifts to people just moving around, talking to each other, going inside the house. There’s a disconnect in several important transitions in the story.

It’s my honest opinion that there’s a lot of good ideas woven in this story, it just needed a little more work. I would have liked to see the story from Joanie and Marcela’s points of view. Marcela was a fiery spirit that didn’t enjoy her life on the farm at all. The connection of Cello and Joanie wasn’t relevant enough for me to warrant his point of view.

This was not at all what I was expecting. The blurb leads you to believe it will be filled with magic and instead, you are given a dark and depressing book full of child abuse, neglect, and an unsettling incestuous attraction. I felt more depressed the longer I read it and was left horrified and disturbed by the amount of horror those children faced.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.

This is dark, sad, and definitely not for everyone. Primarly told in the third person by Cello, it's the story of his foster sister Joanie, her missing baby, the Vine, and the horrible conditions in which a group of five fosters live. It's set on a farm in rural West Virginia where a valuable vine grows and is tended by the children, whose fingers are small enough to pull weeds, and older girls who can nurture it once they menstruate. Joanie was sold off to her foster aunt (a heinous person) to serve as a nurse and wife to her cretinous son, whose death sends things spiraling. She's rescued and retuned, pregnant and miserable. I can't begin to describe how awful the conditions are- the dirt, the beating, the abuse. The vine, you will quickly realize, has some sort of addictive quality but how much is not clear for a while. It starts slowly and then builds but know that Joanie's story trickles out in a back and forth way over the course of the novel. It's an interesting read and you will root for these kids, especially, I think, Cello. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Daughters of the Wild is as lush in detail as the garden setting of the book. Following a ragtag family of orphans who tend a mysterious generational garden and vine, this book holds the reader's interest from the first page. Cello, like the instrument, narrates the story allowing the reader to learn along with him the depths of dysfunction and the strengths of the bonds in the family.

Woah. I DNFd about 10% in.

The writing was just.... awkward. I honestly tried to get past it, but it was so repetitive it was starting to make me upset.

I feel like this book might have it’s audience, but I am not a part of it.

This was a powerful and well written book. I was captured all the way through. It twists and turns unpredictably and has many layers. Loved it!

In the right hands, this could have been a wonderful story of the situational dangers that come with foster care, bad foster families and the good that can be found there. With the right editor the words choice could have been clipped a bit, a book with a great plot could have maybe been cultivated a bit better? However, despite the realistic abuse the book was difficult to follow. Not because, as one might assume, the violence, hurt and deeply felt emotions left you lacking- no those were all very well described. The rest of the book just didn’t really need the extra descriptions. It’s almost as if it was attempting to be prose, but never decided to fully commit. . “It was the middle of the night,
but the sky screamed with light
Knocking Helen Joseph awake.
She rolled out of her blanket,
Almost crushing
Her dreaming baby sisters
Beside her on the floor.”

That works a little better. Let’s take it one step further. Let’s take it away from flowery, long sentences.

“Helen Joseph awoke to light screaming across the sky. It was the middle of the night and her baby sisters dreamed on the floor beside her. She rolled out of her blanket and nearly crushed them.”
That’s way better and I’m not a writer. The sentences flow together here, the ideas are all present and while it certainly wouldn’t win any awards it might keep your interest a little more.

The “tell” not “show” existed in this book and it was strong. As did the feeling of true companionship between the characters. While the writing was distracting and hard to digest, the characters seemed truly to care for each other. Sil’s desperation to protect Cello while still protecting himself seemed realistic. The Josephs felt like people who believed in their mission and product and that they weren’t evil, people we have all met. So if you can get past the word mazes to the heart of the book, give it a shot.

Just prepare for a hallucinogenic ending.

Daughters of the Wild by Natalka Burian
⭐️⭐️ *

*1.5 stars rounded up

I received an ARC of this book via Net Galley and Harlequin Trade Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Joanie, Cello, Marcela and other foster kids live on a farm in West Virginia. They help cultivate, tend, and harvest the “Vine of Heaven.” They live in a rundown trailer next to their foster parents, Letta and Sil. Joanie and Cello are the oldest and most knowledgeable when it comes to tending the Vine. Each trained by Letta and Sil. When a girl hits puberty she helps cultivate the vibe and becomes “connected” to it. Joanie was married to the neighboring family’s son but when disaster hits, she and her unborn son are sent back to the farm. She seeks the Vine’s help when her son goes missing. Joanie, Cello, and the other children learn who they can trust and who they can’t.

This is a deep book. There is a lot of undercurrent emotion. The story is haunting and written from Joanie and Cello’s perspectives. There is foster child abuse, domestic violence, and drug abuse. The writing style is different, more imaginative, making you piece things together as you go.

Personally, I didn’t like it. It was hard for me stay focused. The adjectives were all over the place, making it feel as if I read the same thing over and over just worded differently.

In rural West Virginia, Joanie, Cello, and the other foster children live out of a dilapidated trailer where each day they work the fields tending a mysterious and magical plant known as the Vine of Heaven. Only the older girls, who have reached puberty, can cultivate the plant. Using rituals the girls bond with the vine and are able to understand it's needs in order to make it grow. With Cello's help Joanie plans an escape with her baby but before they can get away the baby goes missing and Joanie must turn to the vine for help.

Daughters of the Wild is an interesting novel involving the familial bond of a group of foster children. I had a really difficult time with this novel because I went into it thinking it was going to be more fantasy based and it actually is more magical realism based. The realism element involves the story of a group of foster children who are forced to work in the fields tending a magical vine. The story involves child neglect and abuse including the arranged marriage of young girls, beating and neglect of young children, and child labor for an addictive drug like plant. It was a well written novel just a bit on the depressing side and very "cult" like in nature. The Joseph’s, the family who oversee the operation, tend to cite "religious beliefs" for the care, processing, and distribution of the vine and oversee any punishments for perceived crimes. My best advice for this novel is to go into this novel expecting something tragic and more realistic in nature.

I had a hard time getting through this story, as none of the characters really grabbed my attention and the plot was a little TOO out there for me.

I liked a lot of things about this book. The concept is really interesting and the writing is beautiful. However, I struggled to connect with the characters and felt like I was kept at a distance from them somehow. Much of the time we are closely aligned with Cello, but it feels like his own lack of self awareness extends to us as the reader. As a result I just didn't really know what was driving his actions or felt that the motivations given felt too simplistic. I also wanted the ick factor of any kind of siblings having romantic attraction to at least be addressed and maybe qualified by the fact that they haven't really been treated like children or a family in any "normal" sense of the word. Joanie becomes more interesting in the last part of the book as her "worship" of the vine escalates and pushes her to extremes, but I felt like I didn't really know enough about who she was before to see her evolution clearly. Early in the book she's mostly just kind of flat and mean, and by the time we find out what happened to break her, I just wasn't that invested. The ending felt a little unsatisfying for me as well. I like that Cello has found a new life, but everything with Joanie, the baby, and the other kids felt really unhealthy after all that has happened.

*An editorial note: Shouldn't Cello be studying for his GED, not the GRE, at the end?