Rave Review: "Black Candle Women" by Diane Marie Brown

Quick Summary

Type: Novel

Genre: Fantasy, African-American fiction

Summary: "A warm and wry family drama with a magical twist about four generations of Black women, a family love curse, and the secrets they keep for and from each other over one very complicated year. Generations of Montrose women - Augusta, Victoria, Willow - have always lived together in their quaint California bungalow. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when young Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray. For the family has withheld a crucial secret from Nickie all these years: any person a Montrose woman falls in love with will die. Their surprise guest forces each woman to reckon with her own past choices and mistakes. And as new truths about the curse emerge, they're set on a collision course dating back to 1950s New Orleans's French Quarter - where a hidden story in a mysterious book may just hold the answers they seek in life and in love..." Read Time: 3 days

Rating: 5 stars

Review

This book was much more of a character-driven story than most of the books I've enjoyed this year. There is a plot - the four women featured in the story need to break a love curse - but the plot fades into the background so that the author can explore how this curse has affected the four women over the generations.

What this story is really about is family, overcoming generational trauma, and personal growth.

Augusta, the family matriarch, struggles with the weight of a grievous mistake that led to her daughter, granddaughters, and great-granddaughter being cursed. Augusta's story jumped between the past and present fairly freely, which while I normally find a little confusing, was actually easy to follow in this book.

Victoria, the 'special one', is hell-bent on making sure that her daughter Nickie does not make the same mistakes Victoria did. However, Victoria is so invested in turning Nickie into a version of herself that she alienates her daughter by imposing overly stringent punishments when Nickie strays from Victoria's plan. Not only that, but Victoria later has to deal with trauma and resentment from her own mother, which further complicates things.

Willow, Victoria's sister, struggles with a few things. First, we learn that Willow feels shoved aside - she believes that she is in fact the 'special one', and is annoyed that her gift has been ignored. We also later learn that she struggles with feeling betrayed by her sister for 'stealing' her high school boyfriend Jimmie, and with feelings of guilt for (possibly) leading to Jimmie's death and then abandoning Victoria as she grieved with an infant.

Finally, Nickie struggles with growing up with so much pressure to follow in her mother's footsteps. She knows nothing of the family history (aside from Lanora's song) and is growing ever frustrated at everyone's unwillingness to tell her anything. She also has developed a crush, which sparks her mother's worst tyrannical impulses, leading to more misery.

The most fascinating part of this book was reading about the characters' evolutions. Augusta finally owns up to her mistake years ago. Victoria learns to let her daughter live, while making peace with Willow and her mother, Madelyn. Willow strikes out on her own, and confronts her insecurities and feelings of guilt. And Nickie rebels against her mother and takes her life into her own hands.

Even the two important characters with flatter character arcs have implied evolutions that would also make for interesting stories. Madelyn has completely turned her life around, beat her addiction, and is doing her best to repair her relationships with her daughters. She's not perfect, but she's trying. And Bela Nova, the 'villain' of the story, has mellowed in old age. She regrets her past actions, and at the end of the story, offers up the simple solution to break the curse - not very villainous, but given her 'evil' personality back in the 50s, a significant character evolution.

Again, there was not much plot to speak of. I think I could describe it in one sentence: four generations of women go to New Orleans to break a curse on their family. But the character stories that get them to New Orleans are so engaging that I didn't mind the simple plot with a quick conclusion.

Definitely a fun read I would recommend to pretty much anyone.