Rating: 3 stars
In this haunting family saga, a young woman must delve into her country star mother’s music to break a curse that has plagued the women in her family for generations—before her time runs out.
On the morning of Rhea’s eighteenth birthday, she makes a shocking discovery—her mother was the famed singer of some of country music’s most iconic tunes, the legendary Lulabelle “Belle” Powers, and she’s just inherited her massive estate. Eager to know more about this woman she barely remembers, Rhea travels to Nashville to retrace her mother’s footsteps. But as she gets to know Belle’s closest friends and learns more of her story, she can’t help but think something is being kept from her.
It isn’t until years later that her mother’s best friend Hess reveals the truth—her mother believed all the women in her family were cursed to die at thirty-three—Belle’s exact age when she passed away in a mysterious plane crash. Hess dismisses the curse as pure superstition, but Rhea feels something sinister stalking her, her own life beginning to mirror her mother’s as she gets closer to her thirty-third birthday. Desperate for answers, Rhea delves deeper into her mother’s music, uncovering Belle’s last unpublished album Night Songs, which leads her back to her roots in ways she never could have imagined.
Alternating between Rhea’s journey and Lulabelle’s untold rise to country queen, Night Songs is an electric story of inheritance and resilience, love and freedom, and the power of music to connect across generations.
I received a digital copy of this book through the publisher on NetGalley for an honest review.
Night Songs was an okay read for me. When I started reading this book, I was initially enjoying it. What I enjoyed about it when I started was the different perspectives of Belle and Rhea and wanting to find out more about this curse that killed the women in their family when they turned thirty-three. As a thirty-three-year-old woman myself, this plot line intrigued me because I was curious to find out what caused this curse in their family and what was going to happen in the story that would cause Rhea to put a stop to it.
I especially enjoyed Belle’s chapters because I was interested to find out how she became a famous country singer. I also just found out of the two family members in the story, she had a more interesting story to tell. For me, Rhea’s story was interesting in the sense of finding out more about the curse and how it ended up being broken. But for Belle, I enjoyed her perspective more because of the people she had in her life because you really got a good introduction to what they were like in the past verses what they are like when the story is told from Rhea’s perspective. I especially enjoyed seeing her relationships with Hess and Clayton and how both those relationships impacted her career as a musician.
I also enjoyed getting to see the world through Belle’s eyes because of how strong of a woman she is. In this book, she doesn’t put up with shit, and I loved that about her character. I also loved seeing her experiences in Nashville as I felt like this book was a great way to travel there without having to leave your home. Even though I’ve been to Nashville myself several times, I still enjoyed reading about her experiences there.
Now to talk about what I didn’t like about Night Songs. The biggest issue I had with this book for me would be with how the curse ends up being handled. I’m not going to go into all the details in case anyone reading this review decides they want to read this book themselves, but I felt like this book doesn’t really give too much away when it comes to the curse. At all. Initially, I didn’t mind this because it added to the mystery surrounding this curse that impacted generations of women in their family. But I figured with the curse, there at least would’ve been stories about it passed down by the men in their family or something. But there isn’t even that when Rhea eventually finds out that this curse exists. The only explanation she gets from a family member about what this curse actually could be ends up frustrating me because it feels like it comes from out of nowhere in the story. I also found it to be a cop out because out of everything that could’ve been the cause of their family’s curse, the author made this decision and didn’t give a good explanation for it. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if there had been more family history given for it from past generations that explained it. Instead, it felt like the explanation was rushed and left me disappointed. Especially because there were some horror elements in this book that could’ve been used in the story instead that would’ve made for a better plot in the story.
Then, there’s the fact she doesn’t even find out about the curse until six months before she turns thirty-three. So she meets her mother’s friends when she’s eighteen, but they keep this curse a secret from her up until that point of her life. I get that they more than likely didn’t believe that the curse was real, but they didn’t even tell her about it until she was near her thirty third birthday. So they kept it completely secret from her too even though she had more than a right to know.
And that’s not the only issue I have with Night Songs. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of Rhea’s relationship with Micah along with how she ended up breaking the curse. So the reason I’m not the biggest fan of Micah is because I feel like she gets involved in this book with the very first guy she meets when she gets to Nashville. Because when she meets him, she knows next to nothing about him and the way she describes him doesn’t endear him to me as a reader. She initially finds herself uncomfortable when she’s around him, yet for some reason can’t stop herself from engaging in conversation with him. Like their whole relationship in this book never makes sense to me because she never describes him in a way that sounds like she’s in love with him.
I’m also not the biggest fan of how Rhea breaks the curse in Night Songs. Without giving too much away, she basically doesn’t make any choices that could cause her death. I feel like she lives out of force of will and while that can be a powerful motivation, I don’t feel like it leaves a huge plot hole in this story. Again, I feel like the author could’ve used the horror elements she had captured in the story here to make this curse more interesting or at least provided a deeper explanation with what she gave us readers. But since she didn’t, I’m disappointed as a result by what the curse ends up being and how its handled in this book.
Not to say I didn’t still enjoy reading Night Songs though. I just enjoyed it because I found I enjoyed reading the story from Belle’s and Rhea’s perspectives and the characters that can be found within this book’s pages. I especially enjoyed reading about Belle’s relationships with Hess and Clayton and seeing Nashville through her eyes. So if you enjoy reading a book with strong women that flips between multiple perspectives, you could potentially enjoy reading this book. Otherwise, this book might not be for you.
Night Songs published on August 11, 2026, for those interested in giving this book a read.
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