Florida Woman centers around Jamie, a young woman who went viral for a crime she didn’t intend to commit. She is sentenced to an ankle bracelet and community service at Atlas, an animal sanctuary specifically for macaques. The three women in charge of the rescue are a tight knit group but they are warm and welcoming. Jamie is in awe of their ability to survive and thrive in the wilderness. At first, it seems like Jamie got lucky but then she starts to hear screams throughout the night and horrifying discoveries have her questioning everything about Atlas. 🙈

Florida already sounds like its own special kind of hell to me because I’m not a warm weather person but add in the sweltering summer heat, nefarious rituals, alligators and snakes at every turn plus cultish mad women and you get this horrifyingly entertaining story. The story is mostly told from Jamie’s perspective but the author weaves in messages between the three Atlas women as they are trying to figure out how to draw people in to volunteer and donate to the reserve. I loved these little snippets and it was fascinating to see their dynamic behind closed doors. Jamie was a lovable character who just desired to belong and I admired her growth throughout the story. This is a complete page-turner full of twists and turns. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before and I loved every minute. Highly recommend this fun, dark and twisted read!!

#FloridaWoman:

“I was a puppy wagging her tail at a wolf pack”.

This book is very unique and different. If you read (and enjoyed) The Atmospherians, this is the perfect book for you. It’s like Tiger King, but make it macaques. Jamie is Florida Woman, just like the wild google search you do with the Florida Woman prompts. Escaping jail time, she manages to get a gig at a macaque sanctuary, Atlas. But as Jamie learns the lay of the land and the love of macaques, she realizes the monkeys aren’t the only ones with some funny business.

Okay, I literally thought this was supposed to be humorous, and it’s not. I mean, there is some dark humor that you can’t help but giggle at inappropriately, but it’s not a “haha funny” book. It’s more.. cultish and sinister. There are a lot of twists and turns in the last 1/4 of the book that many will guess as the foreshadowing and breadcrumbs are masterfully woven into the story.

I did an reading/listening copy thanks to @harperaudio and really enjoyed the audio by Eileen Stevens. I listened to another book she read before this one, and it was so nice to hear her voice again so quickly. She hits the pitch and timing perfectly. The confusion and the innocence in Jamie’s voice as she’s just trying to do her time and be a better person really was something else. I wanted someone to shake her a few times.

There’s A LOT that happens in an explosive finale, so I don’t want to give much away. I will say that once I realized this was a funny/lighthearted book, I was able to really understand motivations. I feel pretty middle of the road with this book, but really enjoyed the narration. Thank you again @htpbooks and @harperaudio for the gifted copy. Florida Woman is out now!

“Lay it on me, girl. You can’t shock me. I’m a Florida defense attorney”.

QOTD: To find your FL headline, you google “Florida man/woman” + birthday. Mine is “Florida woman accused of attacking husband after he refused to stop passing gas in bed”

This book was just okay. Things I liked:
1. The concept (a woman gets arrested in a bizarre “Florida Woman” case and is sentenced to house arrest working at a monkey preserve—I love the nutty premise.)
2. The mostly female cast
3. The descriptions

Things I didn’t like:
1. The story (nothing much really happens until the very end, I was bored a lot)
2. The dialogue (often cheesy)
3. The complete lack of suspense that should exist in a book about a possible cult with a deadly and dramatic ending

Thank you to the publisher for the beautiful advance copy and the chance to be an early reviewer. I’m sure this book will find its audience, but for me it didn’t work and isn’t one I’d recommend.

Mixed feelings on this one. The concept was great, but didn't deliver - this absolutely felt like we were going in a horror direction with a cult and it was a bunch of basic white ladies running a scam. The writing is quite good but the story took forever to get anywhere. This would probably be a 2.5 if the main character weren't so well-written.

I had really been looking forward to reading 'Florida Woman' because, well, I am one. I consider flip-flops four-season footwear, I have swum with AND eaten both gators AND sharks, and there's that Fourth of July video of me with six lit sparklers hanging from the corner of my mouth like some kind of Sunshine State Cigar (please don't try this at home). Even with all that, I'd classify myself as a fairly mild Floridian. Likewise, Deb Rogers' debut novel never reaches its full potential.

The premise is the right kind of wacky: Jamie, a hapless, well-meaning convict, gets sentenced to house arrest and community service at a backwoods exotic animal sanctuary that houses a troop of rescued macaques. Desperate to bond with the trio of extreme conservationists who run the compound, Jamie over and over again ignores the instincts and observations that point to something strange going on. The inconsistencies she refuses to contemplate are more than enough to make the reader wary of the sanctuary and impatient with the protagonist.

After a tedious midsection, Jamie is pushed into a well-plotted climax that feels appropriately escalated and balances many of the novel's themes. Jamie's transformation into a character acting with purpose and agency is so longed-for that it can't help but feel cathartic, and there are one or two pleasant (if unsurprising) reversals woven in. In the end, however, 'Florida Woman' is a lot like that sparkler cigar: a fun idea that didn't work out the way I wanted.

Full review to be published in The Washington Post. Many thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the eARC.

I went into this one with such high hopes (which should be obvious given that it was moved to the top of a very long TBR pile as soon as the ARC came through) but unfortunately, this was not it, and that pains me to admit.

I feel like this book wanted to be so many things but just fell short. I read other reviews in which everyone was marveling at all the twists and turns but not only did I not feel as though there were many "twists" to speak of, but when they did happen, my reaction was more of a "huh... ok" rather than a "whoa, cool!"

I really wanted to have fun with this, but the "fun" felt manufactured and forced, like Rogers was being clever and she knew it, wink wink. Sadly, it all felt a bit too farcical for me, and while I'm up for that, it just didn't work here. I simply didn't care about any of the characters or what they were getting up to, nor did I find it shocking or rousing in any way. This one just didn't work for me - as evidenced by the fact that it took me 5 days to read!

Thank you to NetGalley as always for the ARC.

Thank you to Harper Collins for the ARC!
I really enjoyed this exciting debut novel. It is a spoof of Carol Baskin from Tiger King it seems like and features a cast of interesting characters and adorable macaques. Jamie is a flawed character and narrator who has been given a second chance at Atlas, a monkey sanctuary. Atlas is owned by Sari and operated with the help of Dagmar, a Danish veterinarian, and Tierra, an expert gardener and cook. Something lurks beneath the appealing facade of the magical animal sanctuary and Jamie gets unwittingly roped in. This is the perfect summer read for anyone wanting an adventure full of crazy twists and turns!

A woman in need of a new start finds it working at an animal sanctuary in Florida. Full of quirky characters, a dark storyline, light romance and lots of girl power this will appeal to binge watchers of TIGER KING and books by Carl Hiaasen. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

“It would have been so easy to snatch the key chain from Sari’s neck, break the lock on the macaques’ enclosure, and follow the monkeys as they ran wild into the palmetto woods.”

This is how an absolutely provocative, twist-filled, and atmospheric story begins, in an unlikely setting: a Floridian wildlife center for exotic monkeys.

The writing is delicious, and while I rooted for Jamie, had very mixed feelings about the three women who run the center (and couldn’t help but be drawn in by the twist-filled, cultish narrative), it is the evocative setting (in places reminiscent of Where the Crawdads Sing, and Swamplandia!) that kept me hooked.

The thriller aspect is well-paced with an end I knew was coming but not in the way I thought it would. But most of all, I loved the weirdness, the fantastic creepiness of the story, and can’t wait to see what Rogers comes up with next!

This was very different from what I've read recently. The setting of a macaque sanctuary was unique and fascinating with just the right amount of creepy to tip this over to more of a thriller than contemporary fiction for me. I had previously heard on the news about the monkeys in Florida carrying herpes, but I never expected to read a novel featuring this aspect. I had no idea where this one was going when I started it but the events that unfolded at the Atlas sanctuary were horrifying and I couldn’t stop reading. 4 stars

I am absolutely obsessed with this book. It's engrossing, smart, funny, and deeply poignant. I was totally drawn into the world of Atlas and how Jamie longed so deeply to be accepted and loved and was battling her instincts for self-preservation. I was touched by mentions of things like generational poverty and foster care, and even the backstories of how some of the "villains" survived and what motivated them. I could always do with more queer content, but I honestly felt we got just enough here, given it wasn't a romance. I read this book in about two days and enjoyed every minute of it.

We all know the jokes, they usually start with ” A man in Florida”, and those words are followed by some bizarre and hard to believe story of stupidity. But Florida is filled with woman too, and this is where Jamie comes in, and she does something “Florida stupid”. After, trying to get he life back on an even keel (and in exchange for serving prison time), Jamie takes a public service job working at Atlas, a facility that cares for rescued monkeys. But there are some very dark and disturbing things going on at Atlas, and Jamie finds herself in a very scary place