The Weight of Blood
By Tiffany D. Jackson
Published on September 6, 2022
★★★☆☆
Disaster has struck Springville, a small town in Georgia. Prom night has turned deadly and everyone is searching for answers. Slowly, the curtain is pulled back and the truth is brought forward.
Fueled by racism, publicized bullying and silent vendettas, Maddy's life has fallen to pieces. At her father's demand, her truth has been hidden, but as a spotlight is lit on her story, she steps out of her shell to phenomenally horrible results.
Who is Maddy Washington and what did she do?
This was both an HCC pick from our fall showcase AND the pick for my local bookclub, so I've had some great conversations about this book. Prior to reading it, I actually listened to the audiobook of White Smoke, also by Tiffany D. Jackson, and thoroughly enjoyed the story. However, by comparison, this story fell a bit flat for me.
It feels like a story that has been done before: outcast at school gets ostracized and bullied in a Southern American town that holds onto racist ideologies until something causes them to snap. It was a retelling of Carrie with a racial twist, but this caused it to be fairly predictable, taking away from some of the suspense and thrill.
I didn't really see too much character progression for Maddy or any of the other players, except for maybe Wendy? Yes, she starts coming out of her shell with Kenny, but at the same time there were some pretty quick changes from being a suppressed girl who was isolated from society for most of her life and living under the thumb of her controlling father to going out for social calls with a boy and seemingly not having any issues with trauma from her upbringing.
I think the part of this issue is that the story is told from SO many perspectives, including podcasts and news articles, that it became hard to follow intentions and plots. I think it would have been more intriguing to follow the story more closely in Maddy's head or experiences, since this was about her navigating life, school, and her new abilities.
I'm curious on how she wasn't called out for hiding her lineage - I'm not a POC, but I have highly humid-reacting hair that even a moist day will cause my hair to balloon. The events of this book are in Georgia, a notoriously humid state, so I'm curious on how she was able to hide her hair. I'm most likely being ignorant - and I can admit this - but even with the measures her father takes to make her hair smooth, there would HAVE to be more than a couple of instances where her hair had a mind of its own.
I know it may seem a bit inconsequential, but I always have a bit of an eagle-eye for pop culture references. The book is based in May 2014. At one point, Kenny states that one of his favourite movies was John Wick when that movie didn't come out until fall of 2014 felt a bit sloppy to me. I think this was just an after effect of poor research into when things happened. Also. ALSO! To see The Matrix related to as a CLASSIC hurt my poor millennial feelings.
I know, I know, I'm ragging on it a bit, but like I said - my book club had a really in-depth discussion about the themes that have really stuck with me. Onto the things I DID like.
The book highlighted a lot of the racism and discrimination that was and is still present in the deep South. These discussions are very relevant today, and I think more authors need to bring them forward. It feeds off of the practice of segregation in the 1960s prior to the Civil Rights Movement, but apparently Springville is still stuck in the past. Despite the racist overtones, it was interesting to see someone like Kenny still being accepted by white society, even though he was black himself. He did keep to himself and avoided making waves under the gaze of his overbearing parents, but it just felt a bit off to me.
Tiffany writes fairly well. I do recognize that I was reading an eARC, so it was peppered with some grammatical errors or incorrect usage of words, BUT these could have been corrected in the final proof. Much like my experience with White Smoke, she describes scenes well and does set the stage for some unreliable narrators and tense scenes.
The use of telekinesis and the heritage attached to Maddy's powers was an interesting dive - and as we know, I love anything witchy based. The twist involved with her story was not what I was expecting, so it was nice to be surprised. Since the South was very much the bible-belt, the relationship between Maddy's "ailment" and her father's reaction felt very realistic.
The latter half of the book definitely fed more of the horror thrill that I was looking for in the book. Overall, it was a good book. It's a quick read, has very relatable themes, and gives homage to some of the best horror writing in history.
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