Quick Synopsis – 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 Desperate for answers, Rhea delves deeper into her mother’s music, uncovering Belle’s last unpublished album Night Songs, which leads her back to her roots in ways she never could have imagined.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.

Song This Reminds Me Of – Those Were the Days – Dolly Parton

Publication Date – Aug. 11, 2026

Bookshop Link – Night Songs by Alli Dyer

Content Notes – There is graphic scene with a miscarriage. There are also scenes of violence, drug use, death of a parent, blood, sexual harassment, controlling behavior, and homophobia. There is also suicide and mental health issues. There is child neglect and abuse too.

Rating – ⭐⭐⭐ out 5

Review – This is a very complex book. If you’re sensitive to miscarriages or mental health issues, this book it probably not going to be for you. There were some parts that were hard to get through because they were graphic. This is a really good book, but not something I would read again because of the darker themes.

Rhea grows up knowing her parents were both people who had died from addiction. She grew up never really feeling loved. When she turns 18, it turns out she’s the daughter of a famous country singer and is inheriting her fortune. The story is told from split perspective. One part is Lulabelle telling her journey of arriving in Nashville and the other is Rhea as she learns her mother’s legacy. By the end of the book, the two stories meet. I did really love the stories, both Belle and Rhea have suffered such similar traumas. And throughout the book there is a slight mystical line. All the women in Belle and Rhea’s lines die at 33 of tragic deaths.

As the story grows, the line starts to blur of is it a mystical curse or something else. The true tragedy is how both of these women were abandoned by the family they had. Both grow up in situations where there is no real love, and they have to scrape for any form of affection. Lulabelle grows up in a Tennessee holler, she often refers to herself as a dirt child, and her upbringing really shapes how she sees the world. To me there is always magic in Appalachia and Alli Dyer really taps into that. However, I felt like this story often leaned a little too hard into negative stereotypes.

This was a good book, but a little heavy to me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria books for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.