Review: "Sourland" by Ariel Delgado Dixon

Sourland by Ariel Delgado Dixon
Published June 2026 via Random House
★★★★

Sourland is one part an institution and all the other parts nothing but rejection of the institution. There, Sapphire has spent year upon year building a hardscrabble queendom of weed-growing misfits. Into that kingdom stumble Frankie, an erstwhile ballerina, and Fizz, a local with a complicated past of his own. And everyone has a hidden agenda.

I had to think for a while about what it was about the premise that appealed to me here. I'd not be cut out for work on an under-the-radar weed farm—I'd be too worried about getting busted, I guess. And while I'm all for broader legalization of pot, my personal interest in it is somewhere between "limited" and "none." But: I like messy interpersonal relationships. I like a bit of grit. I like learning about things that have nothing to do with my daily life. Sourland has all of those.

Three months became five years, five years went to dust. (loc. 112*)

Sapphire is by and large secondary here; she's the one calling the shots and it's her farm that brings people in (and, sometimes, chews them up and spits them out), but really the story is Frankie and Fizz's. Frankie, who knows what she wants and, mostly, what she's willing to do to get it; Fizz, who is perhaps more used to letting the currents take him where they will, but...those are some powerful currents, and he is also a strong swimmer. Nobody is terribly good and nobody is entirely likable, which is about as things ought to be. All the lines I highlighted to take down as quotations are from Frankie's chapters, but of course nobody really sees themselves clearly; just as Frankie sees parts of Fizz and Sapphire that they themselves would not like to see, they see parts of her that are not in her own line of vision.

You don't need much more than the title to tell you that this is a bit of an odd one, but then...lucky for me, I like oddities.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.