As one of Boston’s leading hematologists, Dr. Evangeline Beauford has dedicated her career to studying the mysteries of blood—never suspecting how deeply personal that pursuit would become. Eighteen years after being sent away from her family’s olive plantation, a posthumous letter from her estranged sister draws her back to Beauford Grove, where Mediterranean trees inexplicably thrive in Alabama soil, and whispers of old magic linger in the humid air.
Her scientific mind cannot explain the anomalies in her family’s blood work, just as her wounded heart cannot reconcile her mother’s abandonment. But as Evangeline uncovers centuries-old diaries and deciphers symbols carved into ancient trees, she learns a staggering truth: her mother’s decision to send her away wasn’t rejection—it was protection.
The plantation’s unnatural prosperity was built on a sinister pact between French colonists and enslaved practitioners of powerful African and Haitian traditions, binding both bloodlines to the land through rituals paid in blood. Now, with her medical expertise and inherited gifts converging, Evangeline must confront her family’s dark past and her own dormant power.
On the whole, this was a rather strong and effective story. Among the better attributes here is the central storyline that paints an incredibly effective setup for what’s happening. With the amount of information we’re given here about the history of the family’s bloodline and their connection to the property with how they have a near magic-like quality to control dirt, earth, and soil with just a few drops of their blood, there’s a fun setup about her and her relatives at the house that starts this off nicely. Going from that to her calling as a blood specialist makes plenty of sense, especially with how that comes into play once she returns to the house and begins looking into the past. The idea of this all hints at something happening in the gardens and other locations around the house, as it signals the burgeoning mystery that unfolds in the second half of the book.
This second half picks up immensely with the discovery of diary entries detailing how her past gets flipped around the more she looks into it. While the first half is an exploration of her past, blood-study career, and the early stages of the family curse that is explored with rather in-depth work on the history of the family’s presence at the location, that does make for a stilted experience where her interactions with everyone do well at spelling out her past, yet keep the pacing down at first. That does get fixed significantly with more secrets being revealed about why she was called back in the first place, what her presence there entails, and how the pieces come together, setting some intriguing work into play as she struggles to unravel her mother’s writings to her and what it all means.
As it gets deeper and more intriguing about how her cursed bloodline ties her to the house and the rest of the community around them, there’s some entertaining work at play, exploring how it all comes together with the immensely immersive writing. The detail and action employed here are adept at bringing a wholly thrilling experience with the in-depth way it explores the growing revelation of how her family set her up to be the next in line to perform these ritualistic means of honoring this curse, yet that also signals the main issue here. This gets somewhat complicated with the intricate writing style putting these various storylines together, where it's an overlong presentation during the middle chapters, recalling all these secrets and different factors of the story, which can make it feel somewhat overlong. Beyond this factor, though, there’s not much to hold it down.
4.5/5
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