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Darling readers, we have completed another year of Virtual Book Clubs and we hope you had a great time!  Just as we’re thinking about our reading goals for 2023, we’re thinking about our Virtual Book Club plans for 2023.  If you have thoughts and opinions about Heart.Wants.Books Virtual Book Club, we’d love to see them below in the comments or in our DMs.  Please help us make this space a little better for you by letting us know what you’d like to read and experience (or not) in 2023.  

If you’ve been around more than a hot minute, you know what I want to see is … MORE EPILOGUE!  That’s right, one of the reasons I enjoy a lengthy romance series is that each novel feels like it includes a bit of epilogue for each one that comes before it as the couples from the previous books participate in the supporting cast.  When it came across my screen that Kim Michele Richardson was writing The Book Woman’s Daughter, I was SO excited to read the continuation of the story, not Cussy Mary’s story per se, but the continuation via her daughter.  

Also surprising no one who’s been around here any amount of time, when I started reading The Book Woman’s Daughter, I was very confused because we read and reviewed The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek in July 2020.  Naturally, I remembered nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  Like any e-book reader suffering from a lack of memory, I quickly went to my library app, secured the original title, and skimmed the last 15% or so of the story so I remembered how everyone fit together.  And if you’re curious everyone means Cussy Mary, Jackson, and their daughter, Honey.  If you’re confused, haven’t read the first book, and/or  want to jump into the second, please find my DMs and I’ll happily explain.  

As The Book Woman’s Daughter opens, Honey, also a Blue like her mama, is 16 and being sent away by her parents.  Cussy Mary and Jackson are about to go to court for violating a law against mixed race marriages and are trying to keep Honey from going to a reform house if they both land in jail.  Yup, bigotry and hate feature in this book too, like you do in 1953.  Honey is going to live with ‘Retta, who kept her when she was a baby and her mama was working her library route.  Drama ensues, and Honey applies to be a packhorse librarian too.  The rest of the story is about her life as a librarian, including her patrons and the friends she makes along the way, and her efforts to stay out of the state’s custody.  Those who’ve read Cussy Mary’s story will recognize Doc and Eula among others, as well as the community of miners and shiners who live in the area.  Naturally more drama ensues, and the ending is chef’s kiss, even if it does completely lack an epilogue.  

Many of the themes remain, including rural life, bigotry, community, friendships, found family, the patriarchy, and more.  The first maybe third of the book felt rushed to me, but that could have also been me, reading it later than usual because I was sick and couldn’t sleep.  After that, the book and I settled quite nicely and I consumed this wonderful return visit to Troublesome Creek.  Richardson’s writing remains picturesque and her dialogue includes a lovely dialect I found enchanting.  I’m giving  The Book Woman’s Daughter a solid 4 stars.  It was a great reading experience, and a delightful comfort read.

What’s a follow up that you didn’t expect but thoroughly enjoyed?

~Nikki 

If we take a little ride in the way back machine and visit the year of 2020, you’ll see Heart.Wants.Books. wrote about Kim Michele Richardson in July when we reviewed The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, her most critically acclaimed novel. And now, here we are two years later, writing about the sequel that’s also a stand-alone novel and an instant New York Times bestseller, The Book Woman’s Daughter. I need to remind you that Kim Michele Richardson is a Kentuckian, full stop. She only writes books about the people of her home state, and that includes her 2012 memoir, The Unbreakable Child, which delves into her and others’ physical emotional abuse at an orphan asylum in rural Kentucky run by Catholic nuns. All the profits from the sale of her memoir is donated to survivors and the underserved. Richardson owns the Shy Rabbit, a tiny home out in the hollers of Kentucky as a writer’s retreat and workshop. There’s no internet there, so be warned if you suggest your writer friends apply for the retreat. It’s for solo working time, no friends, family, or pets are allowed…. It makes me wonder if Knox McCoy of The Popcast with Knox and Jamie could handle the solitude, but I digress.

Now that we have discussed the author and her personal and professional background I want to spend my words discussing what I consider to be the main theme of the book: Freedom. I don’t want to be spoilery about very important plot points, but every woman (and some of the men) of Troublesome Creek are just wanting the freedom to live their lives free from the tyranny of discriminatory laws and bigoted, hateful people. Honey wants not to be sent to the Kentucky House of Reform, a children’s prison that would keep her working for the state until age 21, 3 years past the age of adulthood, after her parents are taken into state custody. Cussy Mary and Jackson Lovett just want the freedom to be married and to love each other without fear of the law and their neighbors. Pearl, Honey’s newest friend and the newly appointed firetower lookout, just wants to be free from harassment and be left alone to do her job to keep the people of the mountains safe from forest fires. Several other of the women on Honey’s book route want to be left in peace, too, with freedom from the violent attentions of men. There are so many tragedies that occur in a 336 page book, but overall it is a testament to the resilience of the mountain women of Kentucky. A story of perseverance and hope when much feels hopeless.

I, like Nikki, am giving The Book Woman’s Daughter four bright stars. I want to leave you, darling readers, with my two favorite lines: 

“Books’ll learn ya,” [Retta] said, her ol’eyes twinkling with mischief and merriment… Books’ll save you, my troubled heart knew.

That’s exactly what makes such an emotionally heavy-themed read a comforting one at the same time.

~Ashley

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