An amazing debut!!

Everything about this novel feels fresh and raw. Told alongside folklore, we are introduced to two sisters navigating life in Brooklyn amidst their parents’ growing discord.

The girls couldn’t be any more different-Sasha discovering her sexuality, Zora blossoming as a writer but find their way back to each other as they get to the bottom of their own family story.

Candidly told with a headstrong attitude and memorable characters shifting the storytelling throughout. I loved the energy of this book, the no hold backs and the magic when the sisters would share folk stories. The imagery forming in my mind was active and colorful as I read.

They Say:
A tale told from the perspective of a mischievous narrator, featuring the Rolling Calf who haunts butchers, Mama Dglo who lives in the ocean, a vain tiger, and an outsmarted snake, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is set in a world as alive and unpredictable as Helen Oyeyemi’s. Telling of the love between sisters who don’t always see eye to eye, this extraordinary debut novel is a celebration of the power of stories, asking What happens to us when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

I say:
I was able to engage with this title via audiobook. The aforementioned "mischievous narrator" truly comes alive as a griot sharing family tales like an audio memoir. The stories are vivid and mysterious: it is a great way to remember or create histories to share with one's family. I enjoyed this book and recommend it without reservation. Oh, and pay attention: you might find a quiz at the end of the chapters.

While I initially held high hopes for the book, I regret to admit that I had to discontinue reading it. Despite its creative concept and promise, I found myself unable to fully engage with its content and constantly distracted from its narrative. In my personal experience, the book appeared to be attempting to appeal to a more provocative and sensationalized readership, however, I struggled to connect with this overtly risqué tone. Ultimately, I am disappointed that the book did not resonate with me as I had hoped it would, and I hold no ill will towards the author or their writing style.

I struggled a bit to get into this, but once I did I was HOOKED! Soraya Palmer is a master of storytelling. This was beautiful, tragic, and touching all at once. She writes about so many important facets of the human experience in a way that makes you feel seen. I will definitely be recommending this to others! Loved it. Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this Audio ARC Soraya Palmer, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley!

For me, listening to the audiobook may not have been the idea choice for this book. While the narrator was excellent, I often found it challenging to follow the twists and turns in the story, as it moved back and forth between Brooklyn and Trinidad, between the past and the present. For that reason, I ended up needing to restart the book after I'd listened to 70% because I realized my concentration had been insufficient and I'd clearly missed some important details. The restart helped, but some confusion persisted, especially when the narrator was retelling the Anansi stories and background from Beatrice's past.

Zora and Sasha were interesting characters, and I enjoyed following their ups and downs as they coped with their parents' erratic and sometimes violent behavior, explored their own sexuality, and dealt with peer issues typical of teen years. Beatrice's story was painful but did help flesh out her character and make her more understandable, if not particularly likable. Nigel, their father, is equally unlikable, moving in and out of his daughters' lives with apparently little care for the impact his absences had on them and on their mother.

Readers who enjoy fables, folk tales, and magical realism will likely appreciate this story more than I did.

I loved the structure and mixture of literary fiction and folklore within The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts. The characters and relationships are so realistic and complex and it tackles many important topics in really interesting ways. I also loved how there is such good diversity of characters involved in this story, both with the main characters and side characters. This is certainly an impressive debut!

Thank you Netgalley for providing a digital ARC.

The captivating aspect of this book lies in the skillful integration of oral storytelling and the use of roundabout methods to convey histories. Palmer pays tribute to the vast wealth of history that our stories embody. Through the portrayal of a dysfunctional family rife with violence, resentment, communication breakdowns, and sexual identity issues, she weaves intricate tales that are in themselves fascinating.

Thank you to the author Soraya Palmer, publishers Dreamscape Media, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of THE HUMAN ORIGINS OF BEATRICE PORTER AND OTHER ESSENTIAL GHOSTS. I thought the narrator, Jaimie Gray, was good, but inconsistent throughout the audiobook.

For me, this audiobook is a whirlwind of lush settings and addictive character development. The narrator (the book's speaker, Zora) really brought life and magnetism into this story and I was hooked from the first words spoken between sisters Zora and Sasha. And when I first saw bloom between them wisps of magic, fanciful creatures and brush painted histories... Well, I was just dead 😵

More than anything, HUMAN ORIGINS is a story about sisters and sisterhood and what life and time can do to both. Written in truly spectacular style, this is a beautiful read!

Consider this my trigger warning for extreme depictions of violence against children.

Rating: 👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿 / 5 sisters for now
Recommend: Yes!😵
Finished: March 31 2023
Read this if you like:
🇹🇹 Stories set in Trinidad
👩🏾‍🦱 Diverse reads, diverse voices
👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏿 Stories about sisters/sisterhood
👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Family drama
🌈 LGBTQ+ characters

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer is a superb family and character study of a Caribbean family of Jamaican-Trinidadian descent and the ghosts, spirits, and folklore heavily ingrained within the fabric of the family and their ancestors. Told from multiple timelines, the character development was perfect and the audiobook narrator really brought out the characters by adding texture to the story. There are some hard-to-read plot points but they are handled with care and necessary to paint a picture of both past trauma and future growth. I did not want the book to end as I wanted to see where these characters would go next. Great debut!

I received a review copy of this book from the author/publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Zora and Sophie loved hearing the Annancy stories from their mom and dad they were two teen girls trying to come in to their own while growing up trying to be normal teenagers having to contend with their dads violent abusive behavior towards her mom Beatrice and their self. Sophie who also went by Ashe was figuring out who she was going to be for the long-haul Zora had normal preteen worries but after she kissed Robert in the closet at her school the worries grew exponentially she thought she was possessed by the devil was definitely going to hell and kept having dreams about being tied up in Robert‘s basement they just wanted to be normal girls the thanks to their dad and unconventional mom growing up would be anything but normal. Between keeping their dad‘s secret and worrying about their mom things were going to get much worse long before they even resembled OK. I loved this book I loved the narrator who did such an awesome job doing the voices she gave each sister her own personality I love the stories inside the story there’s so much to love about this book and although I didn’t say much about it because I didn’t wanna give anything away there’s a lot to this book the be warned there could be a couple of triggers such as rape physical abuse gaslighting ET see but if you could stomach that you should definitely give this book a listen oh I absolutely love that I know I said that but OMG this is such a great book! I am so glad the world of books has opened up and became all inclusive because these new voices in literature or a breath of fresh air. I love this book loved the narrator and highly recommend it if you love a good yeah fiction Daniel Love dramatic story of the Zora and Sophie just trying to be normal girls in Brooklyn. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I’m leaving this review the voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

"See once upon a time there was a woman. And this woman conjured stories from ghosts and gave them to her daughters. This conjure woman's name was Beatrice. The daughters loved her stories, and when she died it was all that she left them. Little did they know that this book had a life before me. You see, I, Your Faithful Narrator, will always carry the burden of knowing how my stories will end."

Caribbean spiritual folklore meets a grounded multigenerational saga of a Jamaican-Trinidadian family, in this stellar debut by Soraya Palmer. Based on blurb, themes and genre, this quickly rose to the top of my Anticipated-releases of 2023 list, and I'm happy to say that it did not disappoint.

Our story starts with a omniscient, unnamed, and slightly mischievous narrator, recounting the tale of three generations of the Porter women. In modern day Brooklyn, sisters Zora and Sasha have been floating apart for years now; introverted, reticent Zora loses herself in her own mind and journals amidst her hopes of becoming a writer, whilst outgoing and tough-on-the-outside Sasha explores her gender-identity, sex and her first sapphic relationship. When their mothers recent cancer diagnosis brings the family together one final time, old secrets, stories and even ghosts passed through generations resurface, challenging old dynamics and strengthening new bonds.

Palmer seamlessly interweaves threads of classic folklore (Anansi, the Rolling Calf and the powerful ocean-deity Mama Dglo) with a modern narrative into a stunning web of layered tales. Fans of magical realism will be delighted by the small interjections of the speculative in the plot, but readers of more realistic fiction can still find a grounded and heartfelt family-tale with folkloric metaphors at the heart of it. Palmer covers a full spectrum of themes, including sisterhood, family-dynamics, sexuality, race, belonging and cycles of trauma. Yet, the theme of storytelling and myth is at the core of this book. From the actual folktales we tell our children, to the mythologization of our own history to make sense of our lives; each of these women is both a teller of stories, as a character in them. This includes our unreliable narrator, whom voice was one of the highlights of the book for me. No, the narrator is not actually "death personified", yet it still reminded me of the narrative voices of Mrs Death Misses Death and The Book Thief.

From a representation-perspective: there's much to love here as well. As far as I'm aware, most of it is based on the authors own experiences, and as far as my personal expertise goes: the cancer-representation was beautifully done. Especially near the end, I was deeply invested in the relationships of Beatrice and her daughters, and their final interactions with each other and their mothers ghosts genuinely choked me up for a moment.
Overall, I cannot recommend this book highly enough to any fan of Southern Gothic, haunting familial tales or a beautiful depiction of ghosts and storytelling in general.

Many thanks to Viper Publishing for providing me with an ARC of one of my most anticipated releases of the year. All opinions are my own.