Stephanie Sullivan: Review - The Girls in the Stilt House

May 22, 2022

TITLE: The Girls in the Stilt House

RATING: ★★★★

Summary (from Goodreads): Set in 1920s Mississippi, this debut Southern novel weaves a beautiful and harrowing story of two teenage girls cast in an unlikely partnership through murder—perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and If the Creek Don't Rise.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. And she knows there will be a price to pay with her father.

Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio.

As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

REVIEW: Such a wonderful debut novel by Kelly Mustian, but SO incredibly sad. It reminded me a lot of Where the Crawdads Sing with its setting and timeline. Being from Mississippi, I enjoyed reading about places I’ve traveled to, like Jackson and the Natchez Trace. There is so much heartache and loss in this story, but it’s beautifully written, and it grabs hold of your heart and doesn’t let go. I would gladly recommend it to everyone, and I look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the near future.