Bitter Texas Honey takes us on a wild romp through Austin Texas in 2011. Joan is trying to find her place in life, she’s not like her evangelical conservative family or her liberal peers in Austin. She’s tried both political parties on and feels above them. Her main goal in life? To be a writer, an artist, a creator. She finds inspiration anywhere she can, or desperately tries to. 

Joan’s biggest muse in her life is her wild and free cousin Wyatt. Wyatt is a soft dreamer who believes in the Texas classic nuclear family life, but he’s held back by his demons. His debt, addiction and mental health issues. As Joan’s biggest inspiration she wants to move the world to help Wyatt when he’s in crisis, but Joan can’t see outside herself enough lost in her own haze of addiction. 

This is a story of addiction, the many roles it can play and sizes it can take while destroying lives. We learn how deeply generational the compulsion for drugs, sex, love, politics and validation are. We watch Joan traverse through a cycle of men she thinks can appease her as she tries on masculine traits. The whiskey drinking writer, always comparing her latest novel to Hemingway or Kerouac. Socialized with femininity she purposely chooses masculinity not realizing it’s just as harmful. 

This book isn’t going to be for everyone, it’s full of very complicated characters that are very of the time. There is flawed language and ideals. I see a lot of my younger self and my family wrapped up within this story. The rhetoric her family has on politics, religion and mental health painfully mimic my live experience. I’ve dealt with generalized anxiety disorder and depression disorder my entire life whether I knew the name for it or not. I know what it’s like to not be heard by your conservative god loving family. 

Thank you Dutton and netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.