Jo expects to walk into an escape from the complexities and struggle of her life with her mother and stepfather when she opens the letter from her adoptive grandmother Maur and learns she has inherited a farm and all it entails, especially since it comes just as her mother is nearing the end of her pregnancy and Jo is approaching adulthood now that she's 16 and about to gain access to the farm at the age of 18. She blindly hopes that the good memories of the past will offer her a fresh start on her own terms and she can blithely abandon all of the things that have held her down since losing her father at a young age. Now that none of the members of his family are here to remind her of all the things that had gone wrong when she was small and hugely affected by her father's mental illness and the complexities of her parents' falling out, maybe she can put it all behind her and throw herself into something new.
Except that's not how it is at all. Her stepfather Robert insists the farm needs to be sold and her mother, like always, capitulates to his lead and decides to make the trip to Vermont a journey to clean everything up and toss everything away before they sell-even the responsibilities and the very vulnerable man and child Maur left in her care along with the farm. Over and over again her mother insists that everything must go- there is no other choice- its almost like she's trying to convince herself right along with her daughter. Once they arrive on the property, however, nothing goes to plan and all of her mother's ideals fall to the wayside as she grows ill, Jo is consumed with memories about her past she thought she had forgotten, and both the workings of the farm itself and Tom and Hattie, who have full knowledge of what it is she must do and all it entails, demand that Jo face the truth about herself and the past that dictates her future whether she likes it or not.
This isn't the kind of book you pick up because you're hoping to read about lighthearted narratives of self-discovery, change, and acceptance or happily ever after endings. The Cherished is a book about loss, grief, conflict, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships-particularly those that are tangled with false narratives, trauma, and codependency. Jo's grandparents are racist and entitled, her mother grew up being controlled and manipulated by her parents and therefore her view of the world and the way it works are shaped by that manipulation and her own experiences with a partner who struggled with mental illness and who was raised by an adoptive mother who was herself quite complex and possibly mentally ill. Jo then, is a 16 year old who is better than her parents and the stepfather and grandparents she grew up with, but her own understanding of the world is still colored by the people with whom she grew up and the very complex trauma she underwent herself at a young age because of these combined families' issues. We're not going to get an ideal protagonist here, we're going to get an honest one for her circumstances and what little she knows about the circumstances of her childhood and the events that played out during her parents' lifetimes and those of the people who live in and around the farm she inherits from her adoptive grandmother, Maur.
Trauma and pain are not convenient and so neither are the views and understandings of those victimized by them, particularly not when those victims are faced with narratives that fall outside of the norm and include some very dark revelations. Here it is clearly underlined that healing and confronting the past is by no means an easy business but it must be done to go forward into what is rather than what we had hoped could be. The ways that plays out will vary, but so will the things you gain by pursuing what is possible over what is unattainable. I appreciated this book precisely because it wasn't just another dark fantasy/ horror thriller with all the usual tropes and easy resolutions. There's no romance, no poor girl given a sword to wield in an epic battle, and no easy abandonment of doubt and unquestioning trust from the side characters, even the unflattering views of our MC are called into question as she grows as a person and I think there's plenty to be gained from a book that feels like it understands what it intends to say is valid and worthy in spite of expectations. Is this truly horror per se? I'd say this is a bit more literary fiction with strong dark fantasy themes blended into the structure of the book.
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