Daughters of the Wild

by Natalka Burian

Coming soon! Daughters of the Wild by Natalka Burian will be available Aug 10, 2021.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Audiobook, Ebooks, Magical Realism, Magic

329 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 22, 2020

About the author

Natalka Burian is the co-owner of two bars, Elsa and Ramona, as well as the co-founder of The Freya Project, a non-profit reading series that supports community-based activism and annually awards five unrestricted grants to further the work of women and non-binary writers.

She is the author of three novels and the cocktail cookbook, A Woman’s Drink. Natalka’s bars and books have been featured in The New Yorker, Elle, Vogue, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She grew up on a farm, but now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Reviews

[BookNightOwl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daughters of the wild deal with some tough tough subjects. Subjects such as child abuse, drugs, regular abuse and more. I listened to the audio book of this book and I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I was interested it kept me wanting to listen and find out what was going to happen next. I suggest that if you have a tough time reading about these issues this book is not for you but if you can see pass that and read a book that deals with something different get a go.

[Melissa Fish · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t finish. This author abuses adjectives in a way that makes me think she’s got a Pinterest board for them instead of an actual thesaurus. When she described a girl walking away “with meticulous speed” I just recognized that I couldn’t and shouldn’t carry on. Also there’s a boy named Cello in the story, and I’ll bet twenty dollars there’s a horrifically corny story about why he was so named. No thanks.

[Jerrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot of dark stuff in this one - child abuse, marrying off underage girls, drug addiction, etc. But the premise of the story centers around a mysterious vine with some kind of vague powers and there are rituals and . . . The plot gets a little lost somewhere in there.

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher via net galley

This book did not live up to its blurb. I was expecting magic, instead I got a story about abused foster kids being used for farm labor, with the background of something magical. This book made me feel dirty and depressed.

First, the use of "foster" kids. We know they aren't fosters--they are payments to the family from leaches who want the medicine that Mama Joseph hawks. They are brought up in what can only be squalor conditions, as at least 7 of them live in a trailer together. With adult figures who use them to farm the land for the family business and are beaten when they step out of line. One of them gets sent to the main house to marry the matriarch's son. And conditions there are no better than in the trailer--maybe even worse manipulations and abuse.

Second, the incestual lust of Cello for Joanie is disgusting. Yes, they are not really related, but they function as a family and eww, just eww.

I would have enjoyed this more if they went more into rituals that the women used, and Helen and Joanie's discovery of their (craft/spirtualism/withcraft) and the history behind the vine. But we just got a she did this and then her mind went a little nuts.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. In my second fiction read for 2025, I read another of Natalka Burian's books, hoping it wouldn't suffer from the same pitfalls as Burian's later work, the otherwise promising The Night Shift (see my review here).

Unfortunately, I found Daughters of the Wild did echo many of the weaknesses of The Night Shift -- namely a very slow build-up, relationships haphazardly dashed together in an overly convenient way, and a disappointing denouement that left me with more questions than answers.

This work features dual narrators who are teenaged foster siblings, Joanie and Cello (yes, like the instrument). Their archetypes and even physical appearances seem copied from Katniss and Peeta from The Hunger Games: Joanie is dark-complexioned, calculating, and relatively emotionless, while Cello is fair-haired, type B, wears his heart on his sleeve and has it bad for Joanie, who doesn't reciprocate his affections. The mysterious vine (which is never fully explained) adds a dystopian fantastical element to the work, though it's ostensibly set in rural West Virginia sometime in the near-term past (in a stereotyped likeness many West Virginians would probably find objectionable, and again, seeming to borrow from the Hunger Games' District 12 Appalachian setting). The plot centers around Joanie's attempts to find her missing baby, which is resolved in a very disappointing way. Much of the book is quite dark and would not be suitable for younger readers.

My statistics:
Fiction book 2/10 for 2025
Book 87 for 2025
Book 2013 cumulatively

[Dotty · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. I was intrigued by the premise, but I honestly don’t know what was going through the mind of this author. I read it all the way through, thinking it would get better. It didn’t and I wish I hadn’t finished it. It left me feeling kind of dirty...

[Andria Potter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty cover suckered me in. I made it about three chapters in and decided this definitely wasn't for me. 2 ⭐

[The LitBuzz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book because it sounded magical and empowering of women.
The idea for this story was solid but not executed as well as it could have been. It’s implied to be about a magical vine that relies on women for it’s growth. We don’t understand early on what that means of the women tasked with the vine’s upkeep, and after finishing the book it’s still not very clear to me. After a young woman has her cycle, her responsibility to the vine changes with rituals. The ritual is not as detailed as I’d expected from this story. This story is not about the daughters of the family.

Ultimately, this story is about a dysfunctional family living like a cult on a rural farm. Children are placed on the farm by foster care and then grossly mistreated. The story focuses more on a boy named Cello than the daughter named Joanie. In less frequent moments spent in Joanie’s perspective she is intensely focused on using the vine to find her son, this at least was true to the synopsis. Despite all of her time on the vine and pushing her worship of it to her physical limits, I kept trying to understand the “why” of the vine.

More time should be spent in the high-stakes moments of the story.
There are quick and abrupt shifts in the story that needed more time. Cello has a big revelation about himself that occurs way too fast to feel true to the character. When an important character dies, a tense environment suddenly shifts to people just moving around, talking to each other, going inside the house. There’s a disconnect in several important transitions in the story.

It’s my honest opinion that there’s a lot of good ideas woven in this story, it just needed a little more work. I would have liked to see the story from Joanie and Marcela’s points of view. Marcela was a fiery spirit that didn’t enjoy her life on the farm at all. The connection of Cello and Joanie wasn’t relevant enough for me to warrant his point of view.

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Review of
DAUGHTERS OF THE WILD
By Natalia Burian
Published by Park Row Books
******
The book cover was beautiful, the synopsis drew me in and I knew I had to read this. It had so much promise and the story was sad and I was quickly mesmerized until...a vine; which is the epicenter of the story, is being treated like a God. Children are abused, used as slaves and a baby goes missing and it seems of no importance. Things really don’t seem to make sense. There is an attempt of a boy coming out who they mention the whole book as being in love with Joanie, a girl. I just have a hard time believing the boy turned gay within an hour of never having a thought or feeling about a boy before. Then we have a husband addicted to the vine. A vine that seems to have hallucinogenic qualities. Also more abuse but this time to a pregnant woman? It was too much. I stuck it out until the end because I wanted to give a fair review and see if it got better. Sadly, it decimated the plot the longer I read it blew up like a time bomb in my face. This book had so much potential and I am broken-hearted that it didn’t turn out to be the book I wanted it to be.

[Kristin Gore · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Park Row Books for the ARC.

I was really looking forward to reading this book as it’s not my usual genre but I just couldn’t get into it. Part of my problem was that none of the characters were like able. I kept hoping things would change as I got further into the book but it just didn’t get better for me.

[Courtney Maum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transporting-- a story that twists inside of you and takes root just like the psychoactive plant at this novel's fascinating heart. Reads like a Lauren Groff novel with the magic of Marie-Helene Bertino.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the anonymity of West Virginia, the lives of Joanie, Cello, and their foster family revolve around the care and propagation of the Vine. Mysteriously appearing 100 years earlier, the Vine is a powerful presence filling acres of garden space. It grows and maintains particularly under the care of the women in the family. But the static of their normal life is suddenly interrupted when Joanie’s baby goes missing. Cello ventures into the world beyond the garden to find the answer, while Joanie turns to the Vine.

This book was such an interesting read. Right from the beginning, you fall into a world where the author makes you learn, along the way, just how things work and what they signify. Then the mysteries become more convoluted just when you think you’re starting to understand. I liked that mystery and that challenge. It was a bit of a slow read for me throughout, though. I had a hard time losing myself in the story. However, I don’t think that would necessarily be a universal experience. I was sure there was a greater metaphor and meaning to be gotten through the events unfolding, but it just kept escaping me the whole time I was reading.

That being said, upon finishing the book and just laying and thinking about it for a while (and I always LOVE books that make you have to reflect), ideas and possibilities of meaning starting flooding out of my mind. Even though he wasn’t reading it, I talked constantly with my husband about the book, and he was the one I debriefed with afterwards. We both had revelations about different plot points I’d read. So while it was tough to get trough for whatever reason, I really liked the concept. It was original and thought-provoking. It’s one of those where I want to walk away and talk to everybody about it. So please go read it, so that I have someone else to talk about it with! 🤗

[Cosmic Butterfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great read

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Natalka Burian starts with an interesting underlying plot: a magic (or possibly alien?) vine is tended by a group of foster children for the benefit of the Joseph family in the mountains of West Virginia. The vine is imbued with magical properties and must be harvested under the direction of a woman with a connection to the vine. The children harvest the plant ceaselessly for the tyrannical Joseph family who then process and sell the vine. However, Burian fails to deliver on almost every interesting aspect of this plot.

There is little explanation of either the exact nature of the vine or of the exact nature of its connection to main character Joanie. The foster children live in what seems like abject misery under the rule of both abusive foster parents Letta and Sil and the overall terrifying reign of the Joseph family. Plot points are introduced seemingly at random (there is a baby; then there isn't a baby, suddenly members of the Joseph family are either all-powerful or incredibly weak, there's a whole subplot about ginseng) and not explored in any interesting or meaningful way. Overall, I think this book really missed the mark, and I do not recommend it.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was not at all what I was expecting. The blurb leads you to believe it will be filled with magic and instead, you are given a dark and depressing book full of child abuse, neglect, and an unsettling incestuous attraction. I felt more depressed the longer I read it and was left horrified and disturbed by the amount of horror those children faced.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.

[Irka Zazulak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. I couldn't put it down until I finished it and now I really hope the author will write a sequel so that we can find out what happened to all the other beautifully portrayed and interesting characters. Absolutely loved this book!

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sounded like a promising read, but never quite achieved it. The premise is that a supernatural vine has connections to and can only be tended by women. But, the story never truly fleshes out this connection. Instead we witness a truly disturbing foster family arrangement that is also not fully believable. I stuck with the book, waiting for more to be explained, but was left with many unanswered questions.

[Telia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a powerful and well written book. I was captured all the way through. It twists and turns unpredictably and has many layers. Loved it!

[Emily Garvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook that I kept listening to because I really wanted to know the ending. This story was about a magical vine that women control, but I really didn’t find all the ritual talk very enticing, or even that important to the story, really. I was much more interested in the story told by the foster brother as he realizes that his life is not normal and tries to make things right.

[Kaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

n the right hands, this could have been a wonderful story of the situational dangers that come with foster care, bad foster families and the good that can be found there. With the right editor the words choice could have been clipped a bit, a book with a great plot could have maybe been cultivated a bit better? However, despite the realistic abuse the book was difficult to follow. Not because, as one might assume, the violence, hurt and deeply felt emotions left you lacking- no those were all very well described. The rest of the book just didn’t really need the extra descriptions. It’s almost as if it was attempting to be prose, but never decided to fully commit. . “It was the middle of the night,
but the sky screamed with light
Knocking Helen Joseph awake.
She rolled out of her blanket,
Almost crushing
Her dreaming baby sisters
Beside her on the floor.”

That works a little better. Let’s take it one step further. Let’s take it away from flowery, long sentences.

“Helen Joseph awoke to light screaming across the sky. It was the middle of the night and her baby sisters dreamed on the floor beside her. She rolled out of her blanket and nearly crushed them.”
That’s way better and I’m not a writer. The sentences flow together here, the ideas are all present and while it certainly wouldn’t win any awards it might keep your interest a little more.

The “tell” not “show” existed in this book and it was strong. As did the feeling of true companionship between the characters. While the writing was distracting and hard to digest, the characters seemed truly to care for each other. Sil’s desperation to protect Cello while still protecting himself seemed realistic. The Josephs felt like people who believed in their mission and product and that they weren’t evil, people we have all met. So if you can get past the word mazes to the heart of the book, give it a shot.

Just prepare for a hallucinogenic ending.

[Rhiannon Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.



From the summaries I read and the comparisons of this book to The Power and The Bell Jar, I assumed this story would be full of magic and female power. Instead, I read a bizarre book about a cult/religion using "foster" kids for farm labor and so much abuse (physical, drug, sexual, emotional). I didn't simply quit the book because it kept my attention and I thought I would surely get some answers to the vaguely alluded to situations. The short answer is "no." I kept waiting for the moral of the story (foster abuse? postpartum depression?) or the metaphor for “Vine of Heaven” (fertility? harvest?). Then the ending is so messy and rushed and I have so many questions! I'm going to group this one in with Catherine House, which also had great potential but ended up being a disappointment.


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[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many other readers, I was pretty disappointed in this book. I loved the idea of women-centric magic stemming from the natural surroundings of my home state. But the book really didn't deliver. The characters were flat (especially Joanie--I have no idea why I was supposed to feel sympathetic to her), the magic wasn't explained in any fulfilling way, and I don't know that the natural environment and setting was used to its full potential.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!! Look for my review in Booklist.

[Telia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Different from what I normally read but interesting all the way through.

[Radicalmandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping and beautifully written. I couldn’t put it down.

[Melissa Acquaviva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daughters of the Wild is an intriguing , complicated and fantastic story which centers around a mysterious vine that grows in the wild countryside of West Virginia. The vine is discovered in the 1800’s by a young girl after what appears to be a meteor landing. The story centers around what occurs with the girls descendants and their obsessive care of the vine in the 1990s. The family has cultivated and grown the vine all these years and found it to have narcotic like potency. They have built a business around the sale of the drug and they need workers to tend the vine . The resort to stealing foster children from users of the vine who can no longer care for their children. The kids are not treated well and they are used as slave labor, living in a decrepit trailer and abused by their caregivers, Letta and Sil. The story revolves around the children and what happens to them in this captivity.
Joanie, the oldest of the kids, was sold in marriage to the drug addicted son of the head of the operation, Mother Amberly. The abuse and torture she receives while living with her and her husband lead to joanie almost dying and her return to Letta and Sil to work the vine. However, joanie is pregnant when she leaves and has the baby in secret. The kids are all complicit in keeping the baby, the vine and their living conditions a secret from the outside world. Joanie and her foster brother Cello try to escape one night but are caught and beaten severely. A few days later, the baby disappears and the kids all take different actions to try to find the baby.
Joanie believes that she needs to work magic “worships” with the vine to find her baby, leading to a psychotic breakdown and attempted suicide in ether river. Cello takes the approach of trying to make money to get the baby back from what he believes are kidnappers leading to his new found friendship with a boy from the outside world who is caught harvesting ginseng on the property and selling it to a local college professor for the black market. This relationship becomes his salvation. The other children become involved to other degrees until we find that one of them took it into their own hands to try to give the baby a better life.
The story is truly fantastical at times and utterly real and raw at others. The abuse these children endure is hard to read and brought tears to my eyes. The thought that situations like this really exist is haunting. The author does a great job describing what drugs and poverty can do to peoples lives. She really conjures the feelings of hopelessness and despair when Joanie is sold into her marriage at 16 and used as a slave to the family, beaten and locked in a shed to die. The realism of these scenes is the best part of this story, you as the reader are praying these children will find some help. It’s even understandable the way the kids have feelings of love towards their abusers and how that phenomenon occurs. The realism is shattered though, with the hocus pocus storyline surrounding the vine and its mystical abilities and the ending is outright bizarre. Just as you think the kids will be saved from this horrible existence by telling child welfare what has happened, you learn that they were returned to Letta and Sils care and make a deal to live on their own with Joanie finding her baby and raising the other kids and Cello going off to work and living separately from the family. I personally couldn’t understand how any child services could return children to a trafficking situation after a kidnapping, sex slave situation, using the kids as slave labor and the horrific abuse they suffered and finding Joanie floating in the river almost dead. This was my main issue with the book in general. The writing was excellent and the author talented. I would like to see what her next novel will bring. A solid four stars.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teenager Joanie lives with her foster siblings in rural West Virginia, where they spend their days tending a mysterious plant called the Vine. Only women who have gone through puberty are allowed to perform rituals to cultivate the Vine. Joanie, widowed and with a baby, is desperate to escape the farm, and enlists the help of her foster brother Cello. When Joanie’s baby goes missing, Joanie turns to the Vine for help, ready to unleash its full power.
I saw this book on display at a local library and was intrigued by its unique premise. It hooked me right away, and kept my attention throughout, even though it could be a bit of a slow read. It’s weird and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m the type of reader that often enjoys the strange & unusual in her books. I was expecting the book to be more sci-fi oriented, but it leaned more heavily on magical realism. I also found it interesting that the Vine is never explained more like it would be in other books; it just exists and that contributes to its overall mystery.
As you’re memorized by the powers of the Vine, your heart will ache for Joanie, Cello and their siblings. They endure constant abuse, exploited for labor, and are often left to fend for themselves. I wished someone could have swooped in and rescued them. I won’t spoil anything, but I wasn’t overly satisfied with the conclusion and wished for a different ending for them.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is dark, sad, and definitely not for everyone. Primarly told in the third person by Cello, it's the story of his foster sister Joanie, her missing baby, the Vine, and the horrible conditions in which a group of five fosters live. It's set on a farm in rural West Virginia where a valuable vine grows and is tended by the children, whose fingers are small enough to pull weeds, and older girls who can nurture it once they menstruate. Joanie was sold off to her foster aunt (a heinous person) to serve as a nurse and wife to her cretinous son, whose death sends things spiraling. She's rescued and retuned, pregnant and miserable. I can't begin to describe how awful the conditions are- the dirt, the beating, the abuse. The vine, you will quickly realize, has some sort of addictive quality but how much is not clear for a while. It starts slowly and then builds but know that Joanie's story trickles out in a back and forth way over the course of the novel. It's an interesting read and you will root for these kids, especially, I think, Cello. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

[Judy Beetem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daughters of the Wild is a dark, magical story about a group of foster children living on a farm in the backwoods of West Virginia. The children are forced to work on a farm, but girls who have reached puberty are taught to cultivate the mysterious Vine of Heaven. They bond with the plant who tells them what it needs. Joanie, one of the older fosters, is forced into an arranged marriage and soon becomes pregnant. When the marriage goes terribly wrong, she turns to fellow foster and best friend, Cello and the two plan to take the baby and escape. The baby goes missing before they can break free of this horrible place and Joanie's only recourse is to turn to the plant for help. This book was very well written, but it is dark. Children are abused and forced to work and are sorely neglected. Young girls are forced into marriage - all for the sake of cultivating this Vine. The adults fostering the kids use religious beliefs to force the girls to perform rituals to nurture the plant - giving the whole place the feel of a cult. A good book but definitely not a happy one.

[Katelynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really pulled me in and I found myself thinking about it when I was away from it and wanting to know what happened next. While I really enjoyed the characters, especially Joanie and Cello whose POVs we see through, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. Some of the negative reviews I see seem to involve a misunderstanding of magical realism, and that’s not where my problem is. Rather, I expected the ending to be empowering for the characters, and while it felt realistic, it was kind of a bummer. I wanted a lot more for them and more than they clearly wanted for themselves. While it’s an engrossing read, it’s not a feminist masterpiece, and it deals with some tough topics like child abuse (mostly through forced labor). On the plus side, I really enjoyed the characters and how all of the plot connected so seamlessly. My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for giving me a copy in exchange for my honest review.