Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for my advanced copy of The Last Carolina Girl. The book is available wherever you shop on March 28, 2023!

I’ve been surprised by the historical southern novels pulling me in as much as they have. Books like Where the Crawdads Sing and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. As someone who lives in the south, I don’t often want to read about it, but these books have their moments and have been some of my favorites. Did this one make the list?

The Story

A searing book club novel for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and The Girls in the Stilt House following one girl fighting for her family, her body, and her right to create a future all her own

Some folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girl…

For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah’s country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.

When an accident takes her father’s life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state’s shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.

Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home.

My Thoughts

The first sentence of the blurb for The Last Carolina Girl says, “…for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing“. If that isn’t a high bar, I’m not sure what is. When you lead with something like that, I am going to have high hopes. It was because of this single part of ONE sentence that led me to being so disappointed in this book.

This book was just hard to read. I finished it, and part of me is mad for finishing it. I probably should have DNF’d it, but a very big part of me does not believe in DNFing…

The eugenics part is really what made it so hard to read. The concept of sterilization as an effort to “clean” the gene pool. Spoiler alert: It is forced on Leah. She is taken to a clinic against her will, sedated, and then… it was just uncomfortable. Also, while the book is set “against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board,” it is such a tangential part of the plot line, so it was even more out of left field when it happened.

NetGalley asks once we submit our feedback if we would recommend the book to our audience. Well, Down the Book Jar readers, I would NOT recommend this book. Grateful you’re here reading this review, but don’t go read the book.

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