Every sweet thing is bitter is a story of resilience as a trauma survivor navigates a home she left in hopes of trying to break that generational trauma. We follow Providence Byrd as she heads home in search of her missing mother who 13 years earlier she ran over with her car. Her mother survived and Providence became a teen felon with a life she’d never be able to repair. The circumstances under which her mother went missing seem odd, but Providence knows she’s needed there.  In her homecoming she searches her small town for any closure she can get. She yearns for relationships with her two younger sisters Harmony and Grace still stuck under their father’s abusive thumb. She’s also convinced wherever her mother is, it’s Tom Byrds fault. As she searches her home town she is haunted by old memories and ghosts from her past. Trying her best to shield her sisters from the past knowing they’re both also irreparably damaged from Providence’s sin.

Crewson has this fantastic ability to transform a hideous topic with such raw vulnerability and delicate hands. We watch the impact trauma has on survivors bodies and minds. The things our nervous system is willing to put up with in order to keep us going. As well as what we’ll endure to protect those we love. It’s a meditation on found family and the grief you suffer once you finally realize blood doesn’t have to tie you together. The role religious trauma on top of her familial trauma plays within these pages are bone chillingly spot on. Housing bible verses within your body you have no idea how or why you still know them, not coming out to an abusive parent in fear of them harming you even further. 

My biggest critique is that a few of the side characters diversity felt a bit forced to me. I do appreciate Crewson’s ability to create a diversity baseline within her novel, just wishing a few of them had a more organic introduction. With that being said, it is a bold debut novel that is going to skyrocket Crewson’s career as a writer. 

I recommend this book to readers who love Gillian Flynn, Chelsea Bieker, anyone who came out late in life, and any survivors of religious trauma. 

Thank you netgalley and crooked lane books for this copy in exchange for an honest review!