Review of Laydin Michaels' novel Bitter Root

Laydin Michaels has a knack for creating interestingly creepy villains, and characters whose lives their actions affect profoundly.

In her first novel, Forsaken, the villain’s companion was a young child who the two protagonists fought to get away from him and to protect. In Bitter Root, it’s one of the main characters, Adi Bergeron, whose life is shaped by the abusive stepfather she escaped.

The two novels are very different in some ways. Forsaken is a police procedural, where one of the protagonists is chasing a serial killer while falling for one of his victim’s friends. Bitter Root is a story about a curious reporter, Griffith McNaulty, who becomes interested in Adi’s past when assigned to write an article about the restaurant where Adi now works as a cook.

But to me, the novels had plenty in common. Griffith isn’t an up and coming state trooper, but she is uncovering a mystery. Adi isn’t a child, but she struggles to live with the fear she still has of her stepfather and build a new life without him. Bitter Root isn’t set in rural Texas, instead in the Louisiana bayou.

But just as in Forsaken, the setting is vivid, unique, and central to the characters and plot. Although I’ve never been to either place, the novels made me feel like I was there, immersed in the culture and invested in the people.

The pacing of the romance is much better this time around. In Forsaken, the suspenseful parts of the story took over in some places, overshadowing the budding romance. In this novel, since Griffith is trying to uncover Adi’s secrets, there’s a natural flow between Griffith’s curiosity about who Adi is and her budding romantic interest. Adi’s stepfather’s shadow over her new life works very well as a source of tension -- on the one hand, she has a deep need for Griffin’s comfort and companionship, and on the other, feels understandable terror that Griffin’s nosiness will doom them both.

I also  liked that in this novel, Adi herself is the one hiding from the villain. I loved the child in Forsaken and her relationship with the protagonists, but in Bitter Root, the looming prospect of a confrontation between Adi and her abuser felt more immediate and intense, because it directly affected one of the characters in whose head we see the events.

I enjoyed Forsaken and was looking forward to this novel as well. It was worth the wait. While it's different from Forsaken in several ways, I would definitely recommend it.

Cover for an upcoming short story with Less Than Three Press, entitled The Cyborg He Brought Home, and written under the pen name A. M. Hawke. It's a gay male erotic story (with a trans guy as one of the main characters) about a wizard and a cyborg.