White Smoke: Tiffany D. Jackson

Brief Synopsis:

Marigold (Mari), her brother Sammy and their mother are making a trek to a new beginning with their mother’s beau Alec and Alec’s not-so-enjoyable daughter, Piper. Mari, her brother and their mom are POC and Alec and his daughter are kind of as generically white American as it comes. Their lifestyles have really clashed more than once already, and Mari and Sammy both seem to resent their mom’s new man. Regardless, they fell into a housing opportunity that seemed too good to pass up, so let’s all start over!

From the beginning it is evident that Mari’s had some shit happen in her past. She’s obsessed with the idea of bed bugs and is known to check all over for them and go into a tailspin if she thinks she sees/feels one. It’s implied that Mari’s had some treatment before and it’s (maybe?) her fault that the family is how they are now. She’s also given up her stellar track star lifestyle, though she does still love running. Their new-to-them house is the only shining beacon on a street of decrepit homes that have definitely gone way past their prime. What happened on this block, and how did they end up here?

Well, Mari’s mom is a writer and they’ve signed up for this program where the homes and the city are being pretty much totally rejuvenated and they want to bring fresh faces (meat?). Mari’s mom has signed some sort of contract that entails that they don’t have to pay, for now, but she has to give them content or else. Alec also seems to be kind of a dick about it and pretty much implies that Mari’s mom knows how to behave like a good little girl. He and his daughter really just rubbed me wrong from the start. Things in the house are almost instantly and noticeably weird: there’s zero cell reception, even though they’re in the middle of town, the workers that are renovating the place have an alarm set and FLY out of the house at the same time every day (Hill House, anyone?) and Mari and Sammy keep noticing a gross smell coming from the basement at night. A basement that everyone was told was totally off-limits, though they weren’t told why. Sounds pretty suspish.

A surprise comes into Mari’s life in the form of a fist to her face. Literally. A seriously handsome dude with beautiful rich brown skin comes knocking and looking to work in their yard with his uncle. Yusef seems to be the kind of dude that just knows that he’s good looking and isn’t afraid to admit it. I know, insanely annoying in real life but insanely not annoying when you’re just reading the character. Mari implies she’s not interested, though we all know she’s lying to both him and herself, but it does seem like Yusef will be sticking around for a while since he’s helping out, eh?

Mari keeps encountering small but strange things in the home. One night she wakes up and feels like someone’s in the room. Though it doesn’t appear so when she sits up, her door is wide open and the family dog, who sleeps with her, is downstairs kind of sniffing around like he knows something is up. Not long after, Mari and Sammy go for a walk to get some reception and call their real dad, who is an architect that lives in LA but is off on business. He tells Mari he has some things about the town she’s in to talk to her about, but of course, he’s too busy to really explain right now. Mari and Sammy explore one of the abandoned homes and discover… Piper? In the house.

After some unsatisfactory explanation from the tiny demon, sorry, girl, they part ways. But not before they start to realize that the abandoned home looks crazily similar to theirs on the inside, including a fireplace with a family crest over it. A couple of other things also become apparent quickly. Though creepy things continue to happen to Mari, everyone is quick to overlook it because of what’s happened in her past (which is explained, just hang on guys) and that there’s actually a pretty weird dynamic going on in the family. Sammy clearly resents his mom remarrying, Mari isn’t too crazy about Alec and his Annabelle-like daughter, but she isn’t that upset, and what might be weirdest is that Sammy and Mari’s parents stayed good friends and their dad… likes Alec? I know.

The kids all begin school and Mari notices that there’s not many guys. Like.. maybe six in total, and the rest are females. What’s more, the females seem to instantly resent her. She’s trying to keep her head down and not make trouble, and the whole time she’s also on the search for some weed. It’s just about the only thing that will really calm down her mind. Yusef sees her in school and goes after her again, but she tells him in no uncertain terms that she’s not trying to be in a relationship. In actuality, this isn’t about Yusef, it’s about how she can tell every other girl in school wants to throw hands because they see him hitting on the new girl. She also finds a girl she starts to befriend that she can totally tell is a stoner but is terrified to approach about it because she’s been burned before.

Determined to calm her mind, Mari decides that she’s going to grow her own weed. This idea came from her friend back home, kind of as a joke, but she’s running with it, dammit. She joins this gardening group at the library, that of course Yusef is a part of because of his job, and gets access to some pretty great gardening tools that way. She thinks that one of the abandoned houses on her block is a key place to grow and begins her adventure after guilting her former bestie (I know, kind of a dick move) into sending her some seeds so that she can get started. Meanwhile, the house keeps stinking, the dog keeps acting up at night, and Mari keeps having strange encounters, including the fact that her small stepsister is just acting weirder and weirder and the town keeps shunning them.

Marigold slowly begins to build a friendship with Erika, one of the only girls in town that isn’t threatened by the attention that Yusef is giving Mari because she doesn’t swing for that team, and lo and behold, Erika is a stoner! While on one of her runs, she finds Erika sitting in her driveway and they begin talking about the town. Erika tells her that the big, no-windowed buildings that Mari has been curious about are prisons and that half of the town is incarcerated in them, thanks to the very same family that gave Mari’s family the too-good-to-be-true opportunity in their new home.

Erika invites Mari to a party that night, where they both get high. Mari notices that this party is pretty unusual from other high school parties she’s been to in the past because there seems to be a surprising number of adults in the crowd. Yusef’s pretty disappointed in Mari at this point and makes it clear, but it doesn’t stop him from helping her when she wakes up and there’s a man in her room and the rotten egg stench is back. She runs from her room, into her bathroom, and calls Yusef. He talks her down from the ledge and chats with her until she falls asleep in the bathtub. I know, pretty cute.

Mari facetimes her back home bestie, Tamara, and Tamara seems pretty icy. She asks her what’s going on and Tamara tells her that she wasn’t entertained by Mari’s little joke. When Marigold fully explains she has no idea what she’s talking about, Tamara tells her that someone from Mari’s line over and over and over again the night before and when Tamara answered, there was just a tall silhouette on the line. On top of this, Piper just keeps getting weirder, a resident shows up on their doorstep and says that they stole all of his tools, which are clearly on their porch, but none of them have an explanation as to why. He even says they stole his ax, but it’s mysteriously still missing. Their house gets demolished one day after a fight with Piper. Nothing is stolen and all of Piper and Alec’s things are fine, but their mom’s book is scrapped to pieces, Mari’s computer is metal confetti and Sammy’s gaming console is no more. Mari can’t help but notice that Piper seems pretty smug.

Once again, Mari’s facetiming with Tamara when Tamara notices someone walking right past Mari’s room. The weird thing about this is that Mari’s home alone. She disconnects with Tamara and goes searching. Have I mentioned the reverend guy that screams on everyone’s TV about planting seeds for salvation? It’s some huge pyramid scheme but people in town seem to eat it up. The TV gets turned on and this guy’s screaming at Mari and their dog, before the power just completely goes out. Mari’s frozen stiff while they listen to what sounds like a small person running around upstairs. Finally, the power comes back on and Marigold is ready to get out of dodge. She calls Yusef, who’s with Erika, and they go and get her and take her to the town’s joke of a beach to relax for a while.

At the beach, Erika and Yuey (Erika’s nickname for Yusef) explain that nobody really celebrates Halloween in town anymore because a little boy was found dead one year and everyone blamed it on the squatters. They went to that side of town and literally burned the squatters out of the abandoned homes, though some of them died in the process. Apparently this still happens sometimes, and people are pretty afraid to even try and enjoy the holiday anymore. Mari’s pretty upset that this happens and chalks it up as another really weird, messed up thing in her new town.

Time passes and Marigold continues to get closer to both Erika and Yusef. She continues growing her garden and running. The family continues.. trying. Mari takes some of her dad’s advice and decides to do some digging into the hands that pass money around her odd town, coming across a few lawyers, doctors, even one random Russian real estate mogul. She also looks up the poor kid that was murdered that one Halloween night and discovers that there’s a connection between the last name of the lawyer she saw as a bigwig in the town, and the man that discovered the boy. She also notices that he was ten years old when he died, which is also Piper’s age.

Mari has this thing with her alarm. She sets a lot of alarms in her phone with reminders on them to help her stay grounded and organized. One morning, her alarm starts going off with a ton of reminders and they get really creepy. They insinuate that her dog is missing, that she didn’t check her closet or under the bed the night before, etc. She ends up pretty pissed off when the messages bring up bed bugs and figures Piper did this, and she’s just fed up. She kind of attacks Piper and tells her to come clean with all of her bullshit, and Alec totally just defends her and kind of pats her on the hand. INFURIATING.

Yusef invites her to an apple farm and she goes, bringing Sammy along with her so that they can both spend some time out of the house. While they’re there, Yusef begins asking Mari about if she has a boyfriend back home and why she’s so closed off, not letting him in. The game changes a little when Erika gets “caught” with a bunch of weed in her locker. Yusef says that even though Erika smokes a lot, there’s absolutely no way that she would be foolish enough to bring it to school. They were trying to get rid of Mari’s friend, which is even more evident when she goes home that day and Mr. Sterling (the guy behind this all) is there, pretty much insinuating that he knows all and that Mari needs to watch it.

Alright, as the book nears the end a lot of things happen here, guys. Sammy mysteriously has peanut butter in his oatmeal, a huge allergy for him, and he ends up in the hospital. This is following the fact that Mari and Sammy had planted go pro’s and were trying to catch Piper in the act. The dog also ends up getting rushed to the emergency room, and Mari takes the only go pro that wasn’t destroyed to Yusef’s house. He’s pretty fed up with Mari, after the town kind of accuses her whole family of some weird stuff, some of it that she can’t really deny. She comes clean to Yusef about her past, including her history with the hoarding, being afraid of the bedbugs, the drugs, all of it.

On the gopro they find.. an old woman. Her name is Ms. Suga, the one that supposedly haunted the area for many years. Mari had been so pissed at poor little ten year old Piper that she had left her at the home, alone with this.. ghost? Is she a ghost? Mari and Yusef fly back to the house to try and save Piper and keep her family together before it’s too late. When she gets there, you wouldn’t really believe everything that follows unless you pick it up and read it for yourself.

My Rating:

7.5/10. There’s… a lot going on with this story, but not in a bad way! I couldn’t decide if I feel like there will be a sequel or not. I hope so, though!

Spook Rating:

6/10. There are some jumpy and creepy parts for sure. It’s more a psychological thriller when you get down to it, though.

Check out my Goodreads (Traci Bishop) and/or my Storygraph (bookishmamabish) to see what I’m currently reading and to see a good chunk of the books I have already read. My Instagram can be found on the home page and I will share whenever a new post is up as well!

Until next time <3