Curses and Other Buried Things

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 48 ratings

Price: 25.19

Last update: 09-10-2024


About this item

Blood holds all kinds of curses.

Seven generations of women in Susana Prather’s family have been lost to the Georgia swamp behind her house. The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she awakens soaked with water, with no memory of sleepwalking. No matter how she tries to stop it, she’s pulled from her safe bed night after night, haunted by her own family history and legacy. Now, the truth feels unavoidable: it’s only a matter of time before she loses her mind and the swamp becomes her grave.

Unless she can figure out how to break the curse.

When she isn’t sleepwalking, she’s dreaming of her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Suzanna Yawn, who set the curse in motion in 1855. Her ancestor’s life bears such similarity to her own that it might hold the key she seeks. Or it might only foretell tragedy.

As Susana seeks solutions in the past and the present, family members hold secrets tighter to their chests, friends grow distant, and old flames threaten to sputter and die. But Susana has something no one else has been able to seize: the unflagging belief that all curses can be broken and that love can help a new future begin.

Based on her own family history, award-winning novelist Caroline George’s latest novel is a staggeringly beautiful work of hope.

  • Stand-alone young adult contemporary Southern gothic
  • Perfect for fans of Wilder Girls, Dark and Shallow Lies, and Swamplandia!
  • Book length: 97,000 words
  • Family trees are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.


Top reviews from the United States

K. Jordan
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb. Stunning. A must-read.
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2024
This book is a tantalizing, terrifying journey that made me feel both suffocated and free to breathe. Caroline George writes with an intentionality and attention to detail that carried me back to memories long buried while inviting me into the footsteps of her characters, as if living and breathing with them. I felt so immersed in the story, the setting, I could smell what the characters smelled, feel the sticky humidity on my own neck. The grit and rawness of this novel gripped my insides and wouldn’t let go until the end. It faces the weight of mental illness and trauma and generational curses in a superbly messy, relatable story—prose that rends the heart like poetry. The author’s genuinness seeps off the page the way swamp water seeps out of peat. You’ll be tasting the swamp while you pray the characters can find the freedom they need, because suddenly those characters are you. They reflect the freedom we all need.
Customer image
K. Jordan
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb. Stunning. A must-read.
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2024
This book is a tantalizing, terrifying journey that made me feel both suffocated and free to breathe. Caroline George writes with an intentionality and attention to detail that carried me back to memories long buried while inviting me into the footsteps of her characters, as if living and breathing with them. I felt so immersed in the story, the setting, I could smell what the characters smelled, feel the sticky humidity on my own neck. The grit and rawness of this novel gripped my insides and wouldn’t let go until the end. It faces the weight of mental illness and trauma and generational curses in a superbly messy, relatable story—prose that rends the heart like poetry. The author’s genuinness seeps off the page the way swamp water seeps out of peat. You’ll be tasting the swamp while you pray the characters can find the freedom they need, because suddenly those characters are you. They reflect the freedom we all need.
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Corinne
4.0 out of 5 stars Let the Swamp Take You
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2024
I'm torn on this novel for a few reasons. I enjoyed it overall, but I was expecting something a little different by the blurb. I was expecting a darker, more horror-esque novel rather than an intergenerational-curse with romance. It took me a few chapters to acclimate to differences. That being said, there were a lot of positives about this story. It was beautifully descriptive. I felt like I was deep in the Okefenokee Swamp, sweating along with the characters and feeling that oppressive heat. The story was engaging and I found myself waiting for Susana to take action, but each time she made a decision I outwardly sighed.
For someone who was surrounded by lies, she did a lot of lying herself. I felt like Mississippi would have helped her without question, and certainly wouldn't have exposed her to her grandparents if she had asked her not to. The dual timelines were interesting and I did like that they were reflections of the present in a lot of ways. I did feel like the ending wrapped up SO quickly and in such a a weird way. It wasn't what I was expecting at all, and it felt like an easy, quick way to end the story with a big surprise! that I felt wasn't really needed. There was so much beautiful storytelling that it felt a bit clunky to me at the end. Overall, I did enjoy the story and I loved the narrator.

I would recommend for anyone new to audiobooks though, not start with this one. It was really hard to keep the Susana's straight while listening, especially if I had to stop mid chapter for any reason. The narrator's voice was superb though, it felt authentic in a lot of ways.

Recommend for anyone looking for inter-generational trauma/story, contemporary mystery vibes with deep Southern roots and a YA voice. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for new books by Caroline George.
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Southernisms meet new, curse-breaking characters
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2024
I have to say that I have never highlighted more quotes in a book than I did wandering through these pages. I related to certain situations and descriptions on a cellular level.

There is something so uniquely familiar about the female main character. She goes through things all women go through as they come to the age when they realize they can forge down the path already created for them or branch instead onto a new path that will inevitably make them into a person with new dreams and a future they may not recognize when the dust settles.

Once again Caroline George weaves a story from the near threadbare fibers of the past and shining dreams for the future and does so beautifully. I can walk away from this read saying that it left me more at peace than I was when I found it, and a bit more at peace with parts of my history that I previously didn’t know how I was meant to accept.

Beautifully southern, mysterious, magical … and yet somehow a lesson in God’s love, how to find freedom from ancestral hurts, and how digging up the past can actually help you lay things to rest. Bravo!
Great quality/love this
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2024
This book is like reading and having everything come to life around you! It’s insanely good! So realistic and great chemistry between all the characters!
Beata Garrett
3.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric coming-of-age story that falls a bit flat
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2023
If there’s one thing you should read Curses and Other Buried Things for, it’s the vibes. Set in Georgia, the book feels truly alive and rich, with lush descriptions of swamps and a small town where most people never leave and everyone knows you and your business. George spends time building out the town and its characters and I ended up being pretty invested in a lot of side characters, and loving the atmosphere she created. The book has a very strong start and while it ended weakly for me, it was still a fun journey.

The book is split between the perspectives of two women in the Prather family, one who supposedly cursed the women of the family to die tragically at a young age and the other a young girl who’s begun to experience signs of this curse. While both perspectives have their unique points and are utilized in the story, the problems both women go through and how their respective romances work out were repetitive and felt too easily earned. So many times, one of the women debates whether she should take a chance on romance or not and, because we’re getting the same dilemma from both women, it ends up feeling monotonous.

I enjoyed the ways George tackles multigenerational trauma for the most part. Putting an almost supernatural twist on it with a “curse” was great and I like how difficult the journey was for both women because of how their town, families, and lineage affect them. However, there are a few subtler elements though that George included and which weren’t as fleshed out as I wanted them to be such as the racial dynamics that she brings up.

I loved the premise of Curses and Other Buried Things and the first half, but the ending was suddenly very cheesy and the twist fell flat for me. It felt very on the nose and more message first than an organic ending to the story that we’ve been told so far. It’s a strange ending to an otherwise atmospheric book about self-fulfilling prophecies and a dark coming-of-age story.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for the copy!

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