Audiobook Review: Salt & Honey by Candi Miller

We’re pleased to be welcoming Candi Miller to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Salt & Honey, book one in the  Koba series. 

‘Hide!’ shouts her father. Then he breaks cover to draw the hunting party away across the blackened plain. The child sees them shoot him. And murder her mother.

It’s the 1950s but Koba is a hunter-gatherer from an ancient living culture. She’s a survivor.

Alone in a cave, she fends for herself, talks to her ancestors, breaks taboos. She gains healing power and tries to ignore the warnings she feels. She trades with the teenage son of the family who orphaned her – bushcraft for jive dancing, salt for honey.

But now she’s in the greatest danger she’s ever faced: she’s falling for a white boy in Apartheid South Africa, where love across racial divides is brutally punished. She hears the axe shatter the bedroom’s wooden shutters but Koba won’t run.

Book 1 of this fast-paced saga introduces a striking character into romance-writing, offering readers a fascinating glimpse into a forgotten way of life and into recent black history.

*****

Salt and Honey is the story of a black African girl, Koba, orphaned by white farmers and then subsequently raised by them. Struggling to reconcile her situation with her heritage, she find herself falling in love with a white boy.

I was given this novel to review via Audiobook. The narration was superb. There are a lot of native African names and dialects with clicks in it and the narrator brought those to life wonderfully.

This book was hard to put down. Sometimes heart warming and often heart rending, the story pulls at your heart and leaves footprints across your imagination, and there were times when I, as a white male, felt so deeply guilty for the sins of my racial ancestors. Yet despite this I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The characters leapt from the page, and the narrative marches onward, pulling you along with it.

I know that this is only the first instalment of this series and I eagerly await the next.

 (Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources for the advanced audiobook copy in exchange for an honest review.) 

About Candi Miller

Candi Miller was born in southern Africa and has spent decades researching the first people of the region, a group who feature in the novel.

She loves to tell the many unique and exciting experiences she’s had in the bush and around campfires.

She taught creative writing in the UK where she now lives. She is republishing her novels to support a school feeding scheme for marginalised children which she co-founded in 2017.

Say hello to Candi via her website, Substack, Facebook, and Instagram. Click here to read the first chapter of the sequel to Salt and Honey for free. 

Click to buy Salt and Honey on Kobo, Chirp, Apple, Spotify, Barnes & Noble, Audible, Amazon, Binge Books, Google Play, Libro.FM, Storytelling, Audiobooks and Nook Audiobooks.

by

Chris Parish