I really wanted to love this but it was a disappointment for me - and maybe that’s on me. This book just left me feeling super confused? Like did I miss something in there? Also, despite being just over 250 pages, this was a slow, hard to get into, read and took me longer to finish than some 400+ page books. I enjoyed the main characters and I was definitely along for the ride trying to figure out just what was in the trunk. But there were a lot of side stories that didn’t feel necessary and ultimately the big reveal just left me more confused on what exactly was going on.

Of note, this is horror coupled with mystery coupled with historical/Western fiction. But it didn’t quite coalesce. Points for originality, but overall a let down.

LaValle's story of monsters and the different ways they can manifest was truly engaging. Staging it on the frontier in the time of homesteading was clever and served the setting and plot very well.

The title too played a major role in the structure of the story. Women on the land, by themselves, working and supporting a family or going it alone, forming queer relationships, and coming under scrutiny of acceptance; before overcoming violent persecution to form a community of like minds and experiences.

It was really interesting to see how he used hierarchical control to ensure a kind of sheep like obedience, how this one couple used their riches and overtly influenced the members of the town with promise of prosperity and belonging, closing out anyone who did not meet what their requirements were.

Seeing Adelaide finally come into her own and face this secret that her parents forced her to carry with shame and denial was satisfying. Forming bonds with women who made decisions that went against the grain for themselves and the ones they love was also appreciated. His choice to also include the queer relationship between two women at a time where they could very well be put to death shows that women have been loving for themselves within restricted and bigoted societies for ages.

Lone Women was a really interesting novel with a unique storyline. This book was not quite what I was expecting, but I still found myself intrigued and ended up reading this book in a day to see what was going to happen. It was a bit more supernatural for my taste, but others will likely really enjoy!

My favorite books are those that evoke a unique vibe and setting in my mind, and Lone Women is one of those stories that will be living rent free in my head.

This story follows Adelaide Henry who is fleeing to Montana in the early 1900s with a trunk that carries her secret, her burden. Her goal is to survive this brutal landscape as a homesteader to eventually prove up and gain ownership of a claim of land.

At times isolating, this story created an uneasiness and a feeling of impending doom in me as I read. I was scared for her both from what she lived through and what she will go through as a lone black woman in the wide expanse of land that is Montana. All in all, this was a dark and exciting tale with important discussions of race, family, womanhood, sisterhood, LGBTQ+, and life.

Normally when I write reviews, I try to do it the same day I finish a book, while my opinion is passionate and the information is fresh in my mind. However, this one I had to sit with a bit, and to be honest, I still don’t know how I feel about it. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a great book. I loved the characters and the story line, I loved the various different genres combined together in a way I have never seen before, and I loved how the book made me think. However, I’m still thinking, and I don’t think I’ll stop anytime soon. There’s so much symbolism in this book, and coming from the perspective of a white female, I can see some symbolism from a feminist perspective but of course I can’t relate to the BIPOC characters so I’m letting their experiences linger for a bit so I can learn from them. I think this book has a lot of potential to be a book people will continue to read and talk about for years to come. I’d be very interested in hearing more about the authors thought processes and ideas as he wrote this book. I’m sure I’m not grasping all the messages he put into it but I’d love to expand my horizons and learn more. I’ll be looking out for future interviews he may do to help me have a better grasp, but in the meantime, I’m going to let my mind continue to digest.

I spent a large portion of this book thinking WTH is in the trunk!! I was obsessed with knowing. So it definitely had a hold on me.

Adelaide Henry makes her way from California to Montanya, along with her huge, heavy steamer trunk. She's looking to start over with her new land she got through a government program and will be one of the "lone women" cultivating her own land. Her parents have died (and that's a whole story) and she felt she needed to leave California. She gets set up in her new home, along with that dang steamer trunk. A trunk that has to remain locked at all times, for safety.

I don't even know what genre to classify this one. But whatever, I enjoyed it. I went in blind and I'd suggest that as the way to go.

This book had a good mix of likeable and unlikeable charcters, and each made me feel some kind of way about them.

This author did an amazing job of settting the scene in this dark and creepy story, and you will feel like you are a part of it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House, One World and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lone Women. Wildly different than The Changeling, which is one of my favorite novels, but I'm glad LaVelle has the freedom to tell as many different types of stories as he wants. I'll be here for all of them.

Lone Women is a unique read and it falls into a variety of genres: historical fiction and horror meets the Wild West. I think it’s best enjoyed not knowing much about the story, but give it a try if you like strong female characters, tales of perseverance and endurance, paired with a side of spookiness.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for this ARC.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, quite unique. We follow Adelaide from California to Montana with a trunk full of secrets. I love how everything was revealed and how all of the plot threads came together. It's about being different and being accepted for who you are. I loved it. Thank you to NetGalley and One World Publishing for the advanced readers copy. The novel was published about two weeks ago. Definitely check it out.

I was sure that I would love this book when I chose it. The blurb made it sound incredible, and the blurb didn't lie. This book was incredible. I loved every minute of it. There was so much history wrapped up in this tale of fantasy. Victor LaValle did his homework and you can really tell it in this novel.

Elizabeth was a wonderful little mystery tied in with the very real happenings on the plains. I adored the strong women in this book, and I was a bit sad when it ended, but only because I wanted more. Luckily, LaValle included some references to his research that will find their way to my hands.

I smiled for days after finishing Lone Women. There is nothing I love more than rich history, strong women, ghosts, and a mystery. Lone Women has all of this and more. I highly recommend picking this one up. It's amazing. A full five out of five stars from me.

Victor LaValle continues to prove he is one of the most exciting and original writers working in genre fiction today. "Lone Wormen" is a western in the tradition of weird fiction, following a woman on the run from her past who settles into a small Montana town. The characters are fascinating, the story itself is fast as a bullet, and it leads to an incredibly satisfying ending. I loved Lone Women so, so much.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle was one of those books where you just aren’t sure what is happening and every time you think you have it figured out you are surprised again. I don’t quite know to label this book- horror, mystery, thriller, fiction- it has it all.
I have to admit I struggled at first with this one but then I found I just couldn’t figure it out and had to keep reading.
A different story that hasn’t been heard before that I think many will enjoy!

I remember when and where I fell in love with Victor LaValle. It was Thursday, October 26, 2017, I was standing in the massive Waterstones off Piccadilly Circus in London, and I was reading the introduction he’d written for the then new Penguin Classics collection of stories by Richard Matheson. He described a particularly uncanny event he’d encountered in the home of a friend when they were both in middle school, and had done it in such an easy and open style, while never once letting up on the relentless darkness, the relentless weirdness of it, that I was captured.

It wasn’t long after (in fact, it may have been before, I don’t remember this part quite so well) that I read his brilliant novella The Ballad of Black Tom, which reframed HP Lovecraft’s hysterically racist “The Horror at Red Hook” as a story of empowerment and vengeance without masking or making amends for the fact that its protagonist had made himself into a monster in order to accomplish those things. Then came his dark but ultimately humane novel of official and systemic malfeasance The Devil in Silver, the deeply, deliriously weird Big Machine, and then his greatest work to date, the brilliant The Changeling. Along the way, he wrote the introduction to the second volume of Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (Alan Moore did the honors for the first volume), too.

So imagine my surprise and joy when I found out he had a new novel, Lone Women, set for release this year, and my even greater joy to be chosen to receive an advance reader copy of it. I got the eARC back in December of 2022 and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You’ll be able to get your copy, published by One World/Random House, today, March 28, 2023.

Lone Women takes us to the wide open spaces of Montana in 1915, where Adelaide Henry, a lone Black woman, flees after the deaths of her parents on their farm in Altadena, near Los Angeles. She makes her departure quickly and quietly, or as quickly as she can with a huge steamer trunk with a giant padlock on it in tow. She encounters hardships, violence, racist aggressions micro and macro, makes some friends, makes some enemies, makes some mistakes, and that trunk gets opened to no one’s benefit (well, maybe someone’s, maybe everyone’s eventually).

As usual for a Victor LaValle work, it’s the characters who make this one. Adelaide is a great protagonist, but the supporting cast is filled out with individuated human beings, each with recognizably human motivations and fears, desires and hatreds (except for two folks who show up late in the book who either had a bigger role in an earlier draft or were cameos I didn’t recognize; it wasn’t enough to undo the goodwill I felt but I do wonder if there’s a better version of their story somewhere).

We also get one of those set pieces LaValle does so well (think of the outing to the pizzeria in The Devil in Silver, or the encounter with the Swamp Angel in the tunnels beneath Oakland in Big Machine) that’s so good, so genuinely creepy, and told so beautifully in the novel itself (two characters encounter something, and a chapter later, we find out what it actually is when two different characters talk about it) that I went back and reread it as a standalone story.

It’s a jangly sort of story, it sometimes zigs where you think it’s going to zig, but a few times it does what LaValle’s works do and zigs where you think it’s going to zag. And as can be expected, LaValle obviously loves his characters and writes them with a warmth that sets off his works, suffused as they are with bloodshed and horror, as something more than just chillers. There is a love at the heart of LaValle’s universe, and while not everyone taps into it, it’s there for those who do. This isn’t to say this world isn’t a harsh and terrifying place; there are enough dismemberments in this book to please the most hardened gorehounds. But it is to say that when someone in this world gets a happy ending, they deserve it and it doesn’t feel like a cheat.

I really don’t want to get into any of the plot points of this book; I went into it cold, months before the PR machine kicked off, and am happy for it. I will say that the end feels like it could have used a few more chapters because there’s a lot to wrap up, and that there’s a few details that could have either been dropped or expanded upon, as their state in the novel feel incomplete. Overall a good book, if not LaValle’s best. It certainly doesn’t pack the punch of The Changeling or the wonderful sense of deep weirdness of Big Machine, but it’s a damn sight better than most of what’s out there today, and being able to spend a few hours with LaValle’s creations is a nice treat.

Incredibly captivating, indescribably powerful. Victor LaValle cannot write a bad book, or a book that does anything less than linger for a very very long time!

There was a LOT going on in this book and all of it was riveting!

It is a unique blend of historical fiction, fantasy, and who knows what else, but it was an incredible read!

Adelaide is a badass for the ages. She was such a conflicted protagonist and I loved that about her!

I also really enjoyed all of the strong female characters that the book featured. It was very girl power, but not done in an annoyingly cliche way.

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of Lone Women!

I really enjoyed this book! I’m normally not scared easily but this book did give me chills. The story starts every quickly and there is a little bit of slow moment towards the middle. Overall I loved it!

I received an early netgalley copy, but decided to go with the audiobook from my public library. I'll tell you, I was not expecting to like this one as much as I did. After seeing so many rave reviews for it, I had to give it a go. So happy I did. The narrator of the audiobook was Joniece Abbott-Pratt and she was perfect.

What a creepy, original book/audiobook. This was a mash up of genres such as HF, horror, supernatural, and western. I thought the premise was very original and I was definitely really creeped out at points. The beginning of this was crazy and tense. I was immediately invested. If you want to try something completely unique I'd definitely recommend this one.

Out now!

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own. My review will be posted on Instagram, Bookbub, Goodreads, and Amazon.

1915 Montana - Homestead Act that allows people to take possession of a section of land and if it produces a crop after 3 years, the homesteader can claim the land as his. There really were lone women who did this in the brutally harsh winters of Montana. That said, this story went of the rails with this silly horror story and even this historical part did not feel believable.

My thanks to Net Galley and One World Publishing for an advanced copy of this e-book.

{NGkindle, Libby audio, BOTM hardback}

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. While it is described as horror, it covers a range of genres. I think this story is best experienced by not knowing much going in. In addition to an interesting and well paced plot, there are great characters and a palpable setting. This is my second Victor LaValle book, and I definitely plan to read his backlist. Highly recommended!

In the badlands of 1915 Montana, Adelaide Henry arrives to stake her claim. After burning down her childhood home, with her dead parents still in it, Adelaide sets out with only 1 steamer trunk and an iron will. Will she be one of the very few women to succeed at her goal? What is she running from? And most importantly, why are there noises coming from the locked trunk? You’ll have to read this to find out!

I’ve been a fan of Victor LaValle for some years now and he never fails to impress me. His tales are usually creative, beautifully written, and they always make me think. Here, issues of class and race are examined but also what it means to be family, and the terrible consequences of secrets.

This started out as historical fiction, then morphed into something with a western feel, then it turned into a mystery, and then…you know what? It has a little bit of everything! Sprinkled throughout are a few violent scenes, but it’s not the overall focus.

I had a great time reading this and Adelaide Henry is a character I was rooting for. She’s a badass in the band lands. You should get to know her!

Highly recommend!

*Thanks to One World, NetGalley and the author for the e-Arc in exchange for my honest feedback. This it it!*