Epeolatry Book Review: Ink Vine by Elizabeth Broadbent
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Title: Ink Vine
Author: Elizabeth Broadbent
Genre: LGBTQ + Horror Fiction
Publisher: Undertaker Books
Release Date: 12th April, 2024
Synopsis: Bisexual stripper Emmy has lived her whole life in a small Southern town with a few rules: Listen to your mama; don’t kiss girls; and stay the hell out of the swamp. Sick of all three, she sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, where she meets Zara—mysterious, elusive, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.
But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.
I was drawn to this story just by reading the synopsis and I was not disappointed. There is a dark fantasy element to this story, but dare I say it, it has a literary bent to it as well.
The story is well written and extremely polished. The main character, Emmy, just wants to be seen. Her trailer park southern family and the men she strips for can’t see who she really is. Emmy lives in a town full of despair and she desperately wants to escape. As a young woman in a small southern town, she has two employment choices—the chicken plant where her body will be broken along with her spirit by the time she’s 40, or the local strip joint which pays better but has a stigma attached to it in the little town. She chooses the latter in hopes that she can save enough money to one day leave.
Although her family looks down on her for her employment choice they demand money from her at the same time. Emmy simply can’t save enough to make her escape. But then, she meets a young woman named Zara in the swamp, who helps her to believe in herself. Maybe Emmy can escape after all.
/5
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