1.5 stars.
This book was very hard for me to finish. I almost DNF this. Almost.
It started out okay and I was kinda interested to find out about all the hauntings, Cainland etc., but the plot was dragged so much that it was so boring to read. I kind of liked Vern’s time in the forest but all the answers for Vern’s condition were given so late into the plot that I wasn’t even thrilled.
There was so much filler between the important plot points.
I liked the LGBT+ representation and Vern’s view on labels.
I hoped for some good fantasy/sci-fi elements but that was not the author’s focus. It was more about Vern’s journey to self-acceptance.
The part I loved the most in the book was Ruthanne’s story. I was bored to tears and her story piqued my interest.
When the story picked up at the end, I wasn’t even excited- I was just hasty to finish it.
And the end? So the government leaves Vern alone- even after the extent of her power?

Total time spent: 9 freaking hours.

~ARC provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

🌸 Adult • Cult• Sci-fi• LGBT+ 🌸

✍🏼 Book Quote:
Maybe it was hard to give the world your best when the world always gave you its worst.
~Sorrowland

Vern has always been different. Growing up in a strict religious compound was never going to be enough for her. At 15 years old, heavily pregnant, Vern runs away into the woods. Here, she gives birth to her twins while being stalked by the one she calls the fiend.

While running for her life, and the protection of her babies, Vern does some pretty extraordinary things. It soon becomes clear that what’s happening to her isn’t exactly normal. Is she sick, dying? Or have the people from the compound done something to Vern?

Unfortunately this one wasn’t for me. The first part of the book captivated me. I was really interested in Verns story, her children and what their futures held. But after the first few exciting chapters the story slows down a lot. It felt like it really lost its momentum. I was sure after such an intense start there was bound to be more action ahead which is why I kept pushing through. By 60% I wanted to DNF the book as I was so bored. I kept going though, positive the story would take off at any moment. Unfortunately, once I got to the end it didn’t seem all that climactic.

There was some really interesting moments but then I’d find myself skim reading again. My ratings are always based on my own enjoyment. Just because this one wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean others won’t enjoy it. If you’re into a slower paced, gothic, sci-fi vibe then this one might be exactly your thing 👌🏼

🎧 Song vibe:
River by Bishop Briggs

This one is….. hard to describe. As many others have said before me, it defies simple genre categorisation; plus, there are so many points one could choose from when digging into the story.

The story follows 15 y/o Vern and her escape from Cainland (surprise !! it’s a cult), where she was raised, as she struggles to break free of the mental and physical grip they still seem to have on her. She’s also gotta raise some babes in the woods. Her journey isn’t just one of survival, but of discovery, as her body is wracked by impossible and honestly pretty terrifying changes; she’s gotta figure out how it all leads back to Cainland.

But what interested me most about this book honestly wasn’t all the codswallop going on with Cainland, or even what Vern goes through physically; Vern’s mental/emotional journey was what fascinated me most. After everything that comes with growing up in Cainland and being married to the head minion of evil, obviously she’s gonna have some *trauma*. In her head she knows that the things Cainland taught were wrong, but she still struggles with shame and fear regarding… essentially the fundamental aspects of being alive.

The other thing I loved about this book was the way Vern interacts with each of the individuals she meets along the way. Her interpersonal skills definitely have room for improvement, plus she’s got *trust issues*, but everyone ends up with their own fingerprint (whatever that may look like) on Vern’s growth.

But enough gooey gooey praise. The one thing I would say that I would’ve liked bETTER is if the first part had moved a little faster. It’s a lot of slice-of-life in the woods, and while I have nothing against a good slice of life, I was promised iNTRIGUE. SUSPENSE. ACTION. I think you get the picture.

That is all I have to say. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to feel an emotion and/or delve into what it truly means to be alive.

This book was incredibly interesting, the premise was fascinating and the book made you think deeply. The premise, plot, characters, and world building were incredibly well done, but the writing felt distant and it made it difficult for me to get in to the book. That being said, sticking with it is absolutely worth it, as this is a really good story.

This is a dark unhappy book with a very upsetting premise and many situations that made me shudder. Young teenage girls being married to old men cult preacher types and bearing their children; the government running unauthorized experiments on cult members, family members who betray each other - the sadness is overwhelming. I'm also still confused about some of the plot but I did find myself skipping over parts because I was so disturbed by the book.

Many thanks to Netgalley, MCD, and Rivers Solomon for sharing this digital review copy with me in exchange for my honest review of the book.

Sorrowland tells the harrowing story of our protagonist black albino 15-year old Vern who is seven months pregnant with twins (named Howling and Feral) as she escapes from the cult Cainland,. As if escaping an abusive and tyrannical cult isn't enough she is also developing a strange illness that affects her in ways she doesn't quite understand (and when you do find out what it is? it's definitely not what you''d expect). Vern is a fascinating character and I really enjoyed following her journey as she escapes Cainland and feeling her struggles with being a new and inexperienced mother to her two children, living off the land and reintegrating into society, trying to provide for her babies in horrible conditions, and having to also deal with being hunted by Cult members determined to bring her back to the compound.

There are so many themes that are touched on in this story that shape Vern's story and the journey she takes, from race, sexuality, religion, misogyny, poverty, violence towards black bodies, and the loss of identity. Vern begins the story as being very closed off, distrusting, and confrontational towards almost everyone she encounters, but when she encounters Bridget and Gogo? Man, that's when the character development shines. I am a BIG fan of found family stories, and I absolutely adored the family unity of Vern, Gogo, Bridget, Howling, and Feral. The author brilliantly wove them into a beautiful family unit and fleshed out all the dynamics wonderfully. An unexpected delight in a otherwise very bleak story of survival.

I would be remiss to not mention the relationship between Vern and Gogo, Their relationship is definitely a highlight of the story and a beautiful addition to this very haunting story. Gogo, a nonbinary native american, comes into Vern's life like a hurricane and ends up becoming one of the few reasons for Vern's gradual changes throughout the story. Her character is written very well as a source of constant support and love for Vern - which is something that she was never much used to and takes time to adjust to. Their relationship develops so naturally and beautifully, and avoids a lot of often used tropes when it comes to :LGBT couples in books which was a huge relief. I worried for a moment near the end that this book would follow an awful and often used LGBT+ trope, but it was avoided thankfully. We love a happy ending.

The story takes you on a long journey where you gradually learn of Vern's struggles with past/generational traumas (her own and her mothers) that are shown with recurring hallucinations that are vivid and harrowing. Vern is simultaneously struggling with a mysterious and debilitating physical transformation while constantly on the run from a fiend who is hunting and haunting her. The voyage and resolution of her pursuit for answers surrounding Cainland and its leaders, her friends, and family was sharp and exhilarating journey of a story that I was glad to be on.

It's a tough story content wise to get through, but it is such a beautiful story of transformation in the face of extreme adversity and finding the strength to discover how strong you can be no matter your circumstances in life. I highly recommend picking this one up, and I will definitely be looking into the authors other works in the near future.

This book gave me everything. Sorrowland tells the story of Vern, a young, resilient female protagonist who fights for freedom despite the demons that haunt her. It opens on a birth and ends in rebirth with Vern sorting through many traumas on her mysterious past, dangerous present, and finite future. As she travels further away from home, her vulnerabilities harden navigating new roles of mother, lover, and what feels like a monster, but is so much more than she ever could have imagined. Rivers Solomon pens a beautifully fleshed out story (and stunning debut) from delivering a well-paced mystery with Vern's home in the Blessed Acres of Cain, to becoming enraptured in Vern as a messy, magnificent force of nature to be reckoned with. A survivalist tale with lesbian romances and ghosts, this riveting journey is guaranteed to leave you breathless. Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for the advanced copy!

Sorrowland is a science fiction allegory for racism in America, and more specifically, the horrific way in which Black people have been treated and used since the founding of the country. And it's a powerful one, at that. I was immediately drawn into Vern's world, and while it doesn't become clear at first what is happening with and to her, I wanted to know more. Then you begin rooting for Vern (and her children) as she realizes that in order to survive, she needs to fight back. " . . .[they] wanted people to think their power was eternal, but even gods died. Empires, too. Continents shifter. Nations came. Nations went. Castles became ruins." Vern realizes that almost nothing about her life is what it seems. "What order of events did Vern need to disrupt in the lives of the millions upon millions who woke up every morning proud to be Americans? What made someone love lies?"

There are so many quotable lines from this novel. The writing is descriptive and gorgeous. The characters are unique and compelling and jump off the page.

From the publisher: "Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Vern has recently escaped from the Blessed Acres of Cain, a compound where she was married to the Reverend Sherman, the leader of the compound. After giving birth to her twins, Howling and Feral, she makes her home in the woods until it becomes unsafe to do so. As she sets out to find her childhood best friend, Lucy, Vern realizes that her body is changing significantly. Shortly after stumbling across Lucy’s aunt Bridget and Bridget’s niece, Gogo, Vern’s body is gripped by a force stronger than she could have ever imagined. As she struggles to understand her new future, she also fights to rectify the devastation of her past.

This novel was beautiful, well-written, and far beyond my understanding. Speaking out against centuries of oppression, Rivers Solomon uses Cainland to illustrate just how deeply white privilege controls the fate of black America. Cainland is a self-sustaining black nationalist compound. It is purported to be lived in, cared for, and completely controlled by black people. But is it? Upon taking a deeper look, Solomon provides us with a startling view of the truth, albeit truth presented in a fantastical way.

This work is not a light-hearted read. This is a novel that requires deep thinking and self-awareness. It is a novel that exposes privilege and demands accountability. Solomon has so much to say, so much to share and teach. I am looking forward to enjoying more of faer work, as I still have so much to learn.

Thanks to Rivers Solomon, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Netgalley for the ARC in return for my honest review.

Beautiful and poignant writing. Outside my usual reading preference, but it is captivating from the beginning.

Rivers Solomon's writing is wonderful and powerfully descriptive. I found myself cringing a few times at the descriptions of the fungus/spores. Learning about the cult that Vern had been a part of was so interesting and also terrifying. I really enjoyed the exploration of so many important topics including racial tensions and religion.

I was hooked for the first 50-60% of the book, then I started to become a bit lost, it was getting a little disjointed and confusing. I wish it had been explained more what was happening to Vern, with more background from the cult. Howling and Feral were amazing, as was Gogo. It took some time but I did also eventually like Vern.

An intriguing science fiction thriller novel tinged with body horror and terrifying plausibility, Sorrowland kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat until it's final beautiful and shocking twist. Readers follow young Vern as she tries to survive in the woods after having escaped a cult compound known as the Blessed Acres of Cain, on the run from a mysterious fiend who is hellbent on scaring her back to the cult and constantly threatening the lives of Vern's newborn twins. All the while Vern continues to experience strange "hauntings" of people who may or may not be real, dramatic changes to her body including new levels of strength, speed, and agility, and a growing pain deep inside.

Without spoiling what I found to be one of the most interesting and horrific aspects of the novel, I'll say that Solomon aptly addresses themes of memory, responsibility, and systemic racism in brilliant ways, using our country's own history of abuses and a new conceptualization of hauntings to make their points through a weird but accessible lens of sci-fi horror. Recommended.

Vern is a teenaged mother, hiding in the woods with her two babies, from her husband and leader of the cult she was raised in. Eventually, she's driven into the outside world, seeking answers about both the truth of the cult and the changes happening to her own body.

This book took a little while to grab me, suffering, I think, from a poor choice of opening sequence. Vern is on the run, hiding, and giving birth, but we don't know why, we don't know who from, we don't know any of the stakes. All of these points come to light over the course of the book, but I feel like it would have benefited from a little more clarity to start with. Vern is rough, so rough and probably rightly so, but it took longer than I'd prefer to understand why, particularly when it comes to her children.

Once the book had gripped me, I appreciated Vern's roughness, and that of her children. I particularly liked Gogo, and her history and part in the story. The scifi elements to the story, the changes that Vern undergoes, grow more and more interesting the more that's unveiled on the page.

A book that I probably wouldn't pick up a second time, but did enjoy for the most part.

15-years-old and heavily pregnant, Vern flees from her cult compound to give birth to twins in the woods. However, even in the woods she remains hunted and haunted by her past, so in order to protect her young family, she must dive deep into herself to survive.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon is a fiercely beautiful Gothic work that defies genre. It’s part sci-fi, folk horror, and magical realism all in one. The writing is both raw and lyrical, and I found the scenes of body horror fantastically grotesque.

However, there were some plot twists that I wish had been better set up to create a stronger emotional impact. There were also some aspects that took away from my suspension of disbelief—for instance, like Vern frequently leaving her babies to their own devices in the woods filled with wild animals or the twins’ unnatural language and behavioral development.

All in all though, this is a compelling read that deftly deals with heavy themes of racism and abuse in a voice that is as unapologetic and unrelenting as its main character.

I had some difficulty connecting with this narrative. It is bleak and difficult to read at times, as the title should have clued me in on. The prose is top notch so I am not knocking it too many stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a complex and multilayered, well crafted story - a tale that haunts and stays with you for a long time. I feel that Rivers Solomon is one of the most interesting writer's of our time; they don't do sugarcoating nor do they shy away from anything. I love stories that challenge me and this certainly does.

This was such an interesting read! This author always has creative and complex ideas and I love reading them. I’ve always been curious about cults and how people get sucked into them, so when I saw that cults were a part of this story I was interested.

There were some sections that seemed to go too quickly to follow but for the most part this was a great read and really made me think.

This book had so many things going for it. A fascinating concept, queerness, it's occasional imagery, anger. I really loved the concept, all of it. It's the tale of Vern, a young girl in a cult devoted to the God of Cain. It's ostensibly a Black Power movement, a total excoriation of anything deemed white. They grow their own food, partake of only Black media, and are almost completely insular. The down side is that they are also conservatively, religiously patriarchal. So Vern, being upset about the disappearance of her best friend and first love, and embittered at her forced marriage to the leader of the cult (because she needs a man to help control her deviant proclivities), decides--in her pregnant state--to run away. So she does one night, leaving behind her family and all she's ever known. She gives birth in the woods and is tracked by an unknown person who leaves threatening messages in the form of bloodied baby clothes. Vern spends nearly three years in the woods.

Vern is also albino and very nearly blind. She bears twins, one Black and one albino. Howling and Feral, respectively. She runs off one day and begins an affair with a strange white woman, which will haunt her throughout the novel.

Speaking of hauntings, she has those too. Nearly everyone in the cult has night terrors, but Vern starts seeing things at any given time of day. And some of them, as the book progresses, can see her right back.

Eventually, she tries to hunt down her friend Lucy, and she winds up in the family of Lakota woman Bridget and her niece Gogo, with whom Vern begins a relationship. As things come to a head, Vern learns about who she really is, what the cult really is, and what she will become.

So again, some great elements. Cults, government conspiracy, LGBT+ character representation, Indigenous characters of importance who--spoiler--don't DIE. This book has some great things going for it! Like, really great things.

So why three stars? Because the elements of semi-magical realism don't quite work for me. Nor did Vern, really. Her children are just a little too precocious and advanced for their years. They don't talk like the kids they should be throughout the book. I didn't believe them. And, once Vern is in the woods, I was boggled. This is strangely a book based somewhat in reality, but her years in the woods are like a strange fairy tale. She wasn't so very far from civilization, but she refuses to leave the woods and becomes sort of feral? For three years? I think if the book had had a more dreamy quality that would have worked for me, but it really doesn't. So I spent most of the book not believing the story. Which made me sad, because I wanted to be invested. I wanted to really love it. There are so many awesome things going on with this book, but the execution for me just fell a little flat, a little unfulfilled; the pacing a little unbalanced. Still, some of the things going on are truly cool, and I would have liked more exploration of those things.

When I got approved for this arc from Netgalley I screeched. Rivers Solomon is one of my favorite authors, and I just love their writing style so much. This has become one of my new all-time favorite books, and it was just so so good, from beginning to end.
I'm not kidding when I say that I cannot find a single thing I didn't like about this. The writing is amazing, the characters are amazing, the themes are amazing, and it's all just so unique and creative. I don't have much to add except I need a physical copy of this when it comes out. 10/5 stars, and I'll continue to read anything Solomon writes. ALSO, Vern is probably one of the most badass characters ever, and I wish I knew her in real life

In this intense novel, a young woman raised in a religious compound escapes, but not before she's been unknowingly subjected to experiments that will change her body in dramatic ways. This is a story of race and and conspiracies and survival and motherhood and desire that breaks the boundaries of genre: it's a thriller, a political commentary, and erotica all in one. Vern, 15 and pregnant by the leader of an all-Black religious community, flees into the woods, where she gives birth to twins and raises them for four years, her only encounters with others being rare, passionate trysts with a woman who seems to know the area a little too well. As her children grow, Vern decides to leave the forest to seek out a safe haven, but the journey is difficult and dangerous. Hunted by her former lover and physically changing day by day, Vern ultimately chooses to fight the powers that truly run the cult. This book and its intersectional foci would be an outstanding read for any discussion group.