Review: Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley and the Berkley Besties program.

This book has a lot going on and addresses some pretty heavy topics.  This spans several genres, to name a few it is a bit horror, mythological/folklore, and mystery/thriller.  The author takes a deep look into very real issues that Native and Indigenous people face such as suicide, substance abuse, and trauma.

This follows alternating points of view Louie in the past, and Noemi in the present.  In Louie's chapters he is a teenager, and much of his time is spent babysitting his toddler aged niece Noemi and being the man of the house for his sister and mom.  He does his best to take care of them and uphold customs and traditions.  During the summer the story takes place the reservation they live on is plagued with several deaths, all of which end up having some strange circumstances or occurrences.  Louie is caught up in the legends and lore of his people as more strange things happen that summer.  He tries to understand what is going on and get to the bottom of things

In Noemi's chapters, she is in her late thirties and has just learned that the love of her life has been involved in a fatal car accident, and his death has been ruled suicide.  She is adamant that he would never do that, so she tries to figure out what really happened.  With Uncle Louie's help she tries to find out if it truly was an accident or if Roddy was hiding his internal pain and trauma from her.  

I found the pacing of this book to be very slow and there are a ton of characters to keep track of.  The vast majority of the story is told from Louie's POV in the 1980's, with Noemi's POV sprinkled throughout.  The past and the present are connected, however I felt like there were two distinct books as Noemi's chapters felt a bit disconnected from Louie's.  I expected Noemi to go on a similar path of discovery as Louie did to discover what happened to Roddy, but that doesn't happen.  The folklore aspect was interesting and I liked the way the author wove that into the horror elements.  

View all my reviews