Anywhere You Run has an unsettling pitch, but unfortunately was weakened by a lack of thrilling action, dull writing, and horrific events filtered through an oddly naive lens. 

The novel takes place in 1964 in the Jim Crow South. We’re following sisters Violet and Marigold as they flee their Mississippi town for very different reasons. Violet has just killed the white man who raped her, and the police are hot on her trail. Marigold is pregnant and unmarried, and faces social shame. We alternate POVs between the two sisters and their journeys and a man who is hunting them down.

From that blurb, I was expecting a high stakes thriller. What I read was a slow-paced historical fiction, with surface level issues tossed in and handled with careless optimism. 

There were some strengths here - I felt as though Violet and Marigold had distinct narrative voices and personalities, and I think the author has effectively conveyed the horrors of simply existing as a Black person in the ‘60s. There’s a lot of darkness throughout the story, and I think too much trauma is packed into a short book (without giving the distressing events depth or justice).

Here are just some of the challenging topics brought up but not faithfully explored (outside of the overarching experience of racism): rape, domestic abuse, child abuse, homophobia/religious bigotry surrounding sexuality, abortions, poverty, and classism. Some of these are mentioned and then neglected (Violet is somehow not affected at all by the rape), and some are responded to with a far-too-contemporary lens.

Overall, the writing was plain and dry. It got so repetitive that I sometimes felt like I was reading the same paragraphs again and again. While the stakes were high, the action was slow-moving. 

In the end, everything is tied up with a positive & neat bow with strong religious overtones. It felt like a tonally jarring shift from the rest of the novel (especially considering we’d witnessed horrific violence just a few chapters earlier). 

CW: intense racism & racial slurs, hate crimes, murder, gun violence, domestic abuse (physical and emotional), rape, miscarriage, pregnancy, grief, police brutality, stalking, car accident, fire, classism, outing, abortion

Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!

(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)