Consider the set-up here - a girl forced to spend the summer at an old plantation with her high-achieving mother who is searching for details about family history. We're going to expect secrets uncovered about the slave-owning history of the town and probably some modern racism along with a confrontation between the girl and her mother. And all of that is present. There's nothing supernatural here, no ghosts haunting the place (though the early chapters certainly would have allowed for it). Ultimately, it's not even about confronting racism, exactly. Instead Williams has used a town's racist past as a method of exploring identity. Noni picks apart the history of the families that lived at Tangleroot, certainly, but she also ends up examining herself. She's asking what motivates her and the kind of person she wants to be. This is less of a thriller, though it has some big reveals and dramatic moments, and more of a piece that asks us to question behavior and attitudes. Not only is this one worth reading, it's probably worthy of a second or third pass to truly explore the ideas at play.

TangleRoot is a YA coming-of-age novel—but more than that, it’s a powerful coming-of-identity story. Kalela Williams, in her debut novel, dives deep into the complexities of family, legacy, race, and self-discovery through the lens of a teenage girl named Noni.

Noni has grown up in the shadow of her mother—a respected scholar of African-American history and literature, a college professor currently based in Boston. After a recent divorce, Noni’s mom accepts a new position as president of a small liberal arts college in her rural hometown in Virginia. With her father now on the West Coast, Noni is set to spend the summer in Virginia with her mother, who hopes to connect her daughter to their roots and family history. But Noni isn’t interested in any of that. She’s into fashion design and sewing—not archival research or tracing family trees.

The dynamic between Noni and her mother is central to the story. It’s complicated, and full of tension. Noni’s mom sees her as not yet mature enough to stay in Boston alone, but at the same time, she keeps secrets and withholds information about their family’s past. It’s a classic parent-child push and pull—trust and control, protection and independence—and it’s layered throughout the novel in nuanced ways.

I won’t lie: Noni can be frustrating. Her attitude, especially early on, made it hard for me to stay engaged at times. She lashes out and acts up just to spite her mom, and while it’s realistic teenage behavior, it definitely tested my patience. But I’m so glad I stuck with the book, because once you get through that rough exterior, there’s a really moving and important story at the heart of this novel.

TangleRoot doesn’t shy away from tough topics. It tackles racism—past and present, overt and systemic—and it digs into the myths and false narratives that have been used to justify or sanitize slavery and generational trauma. There’s also a powerful exploration of genealogy, and the painful realities that often come with tracing Black family histories—especially when they reveal connections born from violence, oppression, and imbalance of power.

It’s not an easy read, emotionally speaking, but it’s a worthy one. The writing is strong and thoughtful, especially for a debut. And while Noni might test your nerves, she’s also a believable and complex teen who grows throughout the story.

Also, I have to say—the cover is absolutely beautiful.

Overall, TangleRoot is a deeply layered novel that’s well worth the read. If you’re into stories about family, identity, history, and personal growth—with a little bit of small-town mystery and buried secrets thrown in—this one’s for you.

Tangleroot is a brilliant examination of what it means for a young black woman to look into her genealogy. It is a study of family, secrets, finding your own way, and realizing many difficult truths. It also deals with a lot of outright racism in both smaller and larger ways.

Tangleroot starts with dipping your toes in with its ideas. Acclimating you to its characters and their personalities and motivations. Noni is a very curious and very stubborn girl who has her own ideas of who she wants to be and where she wants to study. She pits herself against her successful and well-known mother a lot. Her mother is an activist and writer. Her mother does her best to teach Noni in the ways she knows how, but often keeps her at arms length about certain subjects.

Noni digs in deep anyway. With an urge to know herself she discovers the things that her mother wasn’t ready to tell her. Noni forges relationships with people that her mother doesn’t approve of and goes out of her way to find truths that have long been buried.

The past isn’t often kind and as Noni digs deeper and deeper she learns what her mother didn’t share with her and gains understanding of why. The painful discovery of truth brings familial bonds closer. That ultimately is the power of Tangleroot.

I loved this book and I loved how history is layered in every page. The passion of scholarly research and discovery. This book has so much depth to be found inside it. It is a book I know I will find myself recommending to others again and again.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Noni Reid is none too happy when her mother, the venerable Dr. Castine takes a job at Stonepost College in rural Virginia and expects Noni to go with her. She and her mother have a fraught relationship and Noni is struggling to find freedom. She hates everything about her new home, a plantation named Tangleroot, built by her ancestors. When she stumbles upon a grave in the family cemetery bearing an ancestor with the same name and birthday as her, she begins to delve into the past, unlocking many twisted secrets.

While I thought this book had a great plot and good characters, something about the way the narrative skipped around mid chapter bothered me and pulled me out of the story. There were times I had to go back and reread to make sure I hadn't missed something. That was my biggest critique about the book.

This was such an un-put-down able read. And as someone who has spent a lot of time looking into family history, I really related to the themes of your ancestors letting you down or not being as good people as you may have thought. There are also themes of racism that show how the people who aren’t as overtly hateful can actually be worse than the ones who are.

Thank you for sharing this book with me! I read it as part of my work on a YA award committee, so I can't share my full review here but I appreciate the review copy and the chance to read it!

Why isn't this book getting more hype?! This was such a nuanced, beautiful exploration of family, race, intergenerational trauma, and uncovering history. It follows Noni, a teen girl who moves with her mother to live in the town her mom grew up in, and specifically the house in which her ancestors were once enslaved. Noni finds herself drawn into the family history and trauma connected to the house and town, and navigates her own sense of self and her relationship with her mother.

"Tangleroot" is a really powerful novel that tackles racism both in the present and the past. Noni was a complex character and I found the relationship between her and her mom really moving, especially as they grow to see and understand each other. This book is an interesting exploration of how our family history shapes us, and the ripple effects that trauma creates from generation to generation.

I gave this book 4.5 stars because it really is stunning, and so surprising that it's a debut! However, I will say that there were some clunky parts-- specifically, towards the end there is A LOT happening and I think it could have been edited a bit more, and there were some parts that stretched believability. But overall, such a lovely book that is perfect for fans of "We Deserve Monuments" by Jas Hammonds, or "Your Plantation Prom is Not Okay" by Kelly McWilliams.

This was wonderful! I loved the writing style, the characters, the world-building…everything about it was top-notch. I will definitely be recommending this book!

Kalela Williams weaves an enchanting tapestry of folklore, history, and self-discovery in Tangleroot. With lyrical prose and a captivating sense of place, this story immerses readers in a world where past and present intertwine. A spellbinding read for those who love richly atmospheric tales steeped in cultural depth and mystery.

Because this book is already out, I cannot properly give an advanced review for people to determine if they want to buy this.

Sometimes when you are young you have to learn a few lessons the hard way, among them being: that sometimes your Mom is right and you should’ve listened to her. Don’t judge a person based on stereotypes. When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Tangleroot is the story of Noni Reid, the daughter of renowned Black Literature scholar, Dr. Radiance Castine, who is extremely good at what she does. When her mom gets a job as the president of Stonepost College in rural Virginia, Noni sees her hopes of a career beginning internship in costume design in Boston go down the drain. She has to move to Virginia with her mother for the summer after she graduates and she is less than pleased.

This is where the story also becomes about Tangleroot Plantation. The house that they move into is the former “big house.” Noni becomes obsessed with the girl, Sophie, whose room she occupies as a distraction to her current circumstances.

In many ways, Tangleroot has the feel of a coming of age story. The way Noni interacts with her new coworkers is extremely immature & motivated by her disdain for Virginia. But she discovers the hard way that most people don’t have her privileges & when she insults someone, her mother helps her realize those privileges by taking them away.

The mother-daughter relationship is tense at best. While Radiance is intent on proving that Stonepost was stolen from her Black ancestor, renamed and then turned into a whites-only college. Noni is focused on getting back to Boston any way she can. Even if it means colluding with a family enemy to get the money. While the reader will recognize the danger of engaging with Lana Jean, a woman entrenched in the southern mythology of the innocent and glamourous southern belle. Noni has to learn some hard lessons about who she can trust.

If you like historical mysteries, you will enjoy this book, as Noni tries to unravel the mystery of Sophie and her mom searches for the journal of Cuffee Fortune.

Noni wants one thing. College in Boston for costuming. Her mother, a historian and activist, wants her to follow in her footsteps. So off she heads to Virginia, to a plantation on which her ancestor lived as a slave.

She is then dragged into a myriad of southern small town BS. While there, she’s asked to make the same dress an ancestor made, which feels like an out, the money to support her college wants, as well as giving her information on the former white resident whose grave she found.

In creating this dress and doing this research, she uncovers the messy secrets of the community and the appreciation for her own history her mother thought her lacking.

Noni is an amazing character and I really enjoyed watch her come into her own. Her relationship with her mother was nice to watch change, and the friends she made were interesting in their own right.

This is a very well done YA coming of age novel, and I would certainly recommend it. It took me a minute to get bought in, but this is a multifacted and layered story that honestly got better and better as I went on. I also thought that Williams' writing was stunning! I highly recommend Tangleroot!

Thank you Feiwel & Friends and the author for a gifted copy of this book.

3.5⭐️

This was a great coming of age story. Noni developement was encouraging, inspiring, and hard earned. This is a fairly short book, but I did feel like the pacing was overall very slow. Sometimes that took me out of the book and I found myself really having to try to get back into it. But I do feel ,Ike the pay off was there

Immediately, when I saw the cover, I wanted to read this book. And then, the title alone, attention. I’m really grateful the publisher allowed me an ARC ! Now let's get to it!

Initially I thought it would kind of be a fun historical adventure kind of book but it's a lot more than that. Tangleroot takes on coming-of-age vibes along with history of America but even more so the deep history of how ancestorial DNA for Black Americans will forever be warped due to the circumstances faced.

If you enjoy historical fiction and coming of age, and really interesting characters, this is a good read for you!

Holy cow. This book. It was quite a journey. 20% of the way through this I was getting annoyed about the main character whining about having to be a waitress. 30% of the way through I was losing my mind about how unfair the mom, Radiance, was being. By the end, da**, I get why everyone was the way they were, and being both fascinated and shocked by the revelations unfolding as Noni dug deeper and deeper into her family ancestry.

I think because I don't expect YA books to get this intense with regards to interpersonal nuance and the complexity of human nature, as a reader I got to experience some of Noni's growth and realization. Her frame of reference is what keeps this book solidly in the YA category, because she goes into this book wanting to teach her mom how to be a person (I mean, truly, her mom does some wild things with regard to parenting) and by the end she's had to understand the world on this whole other level. I don't know what I can say about the plot without spoilers, other than I got totally sucked into the world of Magnolia and Tangleroot and all these characters.

I CAN say that I loved how complex (almost) everyone was, and that all of the main characters have flaws and strengths that made me love them for the most part, but also wanted to make me shake and/or yell at them. The only characters that lack depth are very intentional, and sadly felt just as real as the ones we're rooting for.

I did find the denouement a little meh, but I see why the author wanted to give Noni some agency, even if I'm skeptical about how that show of agency played out. Little complaints aside, this book was so good, and unlike any YA I've encountered in terms of tone and the specific details. On a personal level, I've spent some time digitizing archives and records related to this topic, so I came into this book with a sense of just how difficult it could be track down some of the information Noni and her mom are looking for.

Anyway, blah blah, all this to say that this book may be more challenging a read than the average YA novel, but it also addresses some difficult topics that are extremely relevant to the present day, and does so in what I found to be an extremely engaging and nuanced way. At the same time, I think Noni is a relatable narrator for YA readers. I loved this one.

For transparancy's sake: I was sent a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley, but ended up reading it as an audiobook after its publication. This review is being left voluntarily. Also, the audiobook is very well done.

Rating: 3.5 stars

I received a digital copy of this book through the publisher on NetGalley for an honest review.

Tangleroot is a coming-of-age young adult literature story centered around a young black woman who is trying to do things on her own while feeling pressure from her mother to follow in her footsteps. When Noni first moves into this town in Virginia to live on the Tangleroot plantation with her mother, she’s not at all happy to be there and it’s very plain to see. As the story goes on and she begins uncovering more information about her family’s history, Noni realizes she’s exactly where she needs to be and uncovers the truth regarding her family’s relatives that will change everything she and her mother believed they knew.

What Tangleroot does well is provide you with an intriguing story that takes place in a town that you want to learn more about. While this book initially started slow for me, as the story went on, I found myself becoming more interested in hearing Noni’s story. I especially enjoyed Noni learning more about her family history and being able to uncover facets of her family’s ancestry that not even her mother was able to uncover. This aspect of the book was interesting to read about because I felt that while her character is fictional, I felt like the process she undergoes to find out more about her relatives is realistic.

I also found the setting of this small town to be very interesting and wanted to learn more about the town and the people in it. And I feel like this book delivers by providing the reader with a wide cast of characters each with their own stories. With how descriptive this book was, I felt like I was with Noni as she navigates this new unfamiliar place being surrounded by people who don’t know her but have opinions of her because of her mother.

What I also enjoyed about reading this book is how well Tangleroot does in discussing important subject matters such as racism and the role it plays both in the past and in the present day. You see this through Dr. Castine’s experiences with dealing with the school board at Stonepost College, through Noni’s interactions with some of her coworkers at Charm, and even when Noni finds out more about her relative Lacey Castine. As someone aware of her privilege, whenever I read stories like Tangleroot, I’m reminded how fortunate I am to be white. Books like this one also help me gain more knowledge and understanding regarding the struggles minorities go through regularly just because of the color of their skin. And help me sympathize with what’s going on since I know I’ll never be able to understand since it’ll never be my experience.

If there’s anything about Tangleroot I didn’t particularly enjoy it would have to be Noni’s relationship with her mother. It felt like no matter what Noni does here, it’s never enough for her mother. It feels like she’s never happy with any of the decisions Noni makes when they move into the Tangleroot plantation. And I feel like the tough relationship they have with each other is never really discussed either because Noni just ends up doing whatever her mother wants her to do even if it ends up not being what she actually wants. I understand she’s trying to live up to her mother’s expectations, but she never stands up to her mother in this book whenever they are in conflict with each other. I struggled with reading about their relationship because I felt like it shouldn’t have been this way, especially since Noni is old enough in this book to make decisions for herself. And Noni just deals with it, never says to her mother how she feels about things, which wasn’t okay for me.

Overall though, Tangleroot was a wonderful read that I highly recommend. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading coming-of-age stories, young adult literature, and historical fiction. Tangleroot was published on October 15, 2024, for anyone interested in reading this book.

Thank you NetGalley and Feiwel & Friends for this ARC Copy!

The FMC Noni is an artist who has been living under the shadow of her mother who is a famous scholar of black literature and has dedicated her life to uncovering the secrets of her family member, a freed slave who successfully starts a college. Noni and her mother move to the planation house and Nonis life is upended as she learns to maneuver life in town that feels like stepping back into the past. Faced with racism, mysteries, and family secrets Noni dedicates herself to getting to the bottom of her family history.

Wow!!! What a powerful and moving story. When Noni is dragged to live on an ancestral plantation when her mom is appointed to a higher education position at the local college, little does she know how the quest to find the story behind the girl who left sketches in her bedroom will turn into uncovering the towns hidden secrets and family connections between enslaved and enslavers. Part historical mystery, part a deeper dive into the history of racism and all engaging, Tanglewood is a true five star read. It will tug at your heart strings and make you think more deeply about our country’s past.