Retellings are a tradition in storytelling. Often a retelling can take a beloved, classic, or well-known story and bring into a new time with some new cultural elements. Tiffany D. Jackson’s The Weight of Blood is a retelling of Stephen King’s debut and landmark novel, Carrie, reframed in fictional Springville, Georgia in a more modern setting, with the added tension of racism and bigotry on top of bullying, ostracization, and religious zealotry. Right, our protagonist Maddy Washington is certainly not at “Default easy level” setting when we first meet her or any part of this novel.
For much of her life, Maddy has been kept out of society, out of school by her racist and religious zealot of a father Thomas. He forces her to keep her hair straightened using a hot comb to hide any hints of her being biracial/black. Springville, Georgia is extremely racist so Thomas thinks he’s protecting her, although it becomes pretty clear he is probably more embarrassed by his daughter.
Maddy has passed for white based on her skin color, but the hair is the tell and one day when Maddy is unable to avoid the rain, her hair gets loose revealing her biracial nature. Soon enough, she is targeted even more, with kids throwing pencils in her thick hair to see if it would stick. From there, she is targeted as hiding her race in a town that is extremely divided along race lines… there’s a white prom and a black prom, for example. While the rain unleashed her hair, the bullying unleashes something else in her. Many of the students in the classroom where the bullying incident with the pencils happens claim a strange feeling, the teacher suggests there was maybe an earthquake.
Kendrick “Kenny” the star quarterback serves as a secondary protagonist, and one of the black point-of-view characters in the novel. He is pushed and brow-beat by his father to be the star of the football team. As we get more acquainted with Kenny, his true nature becomes clear. He’s a conflicted young man, he knows his status as star quarterback is his only protection against some of the racist elements of his school and town, but that also sets him apart from the other black students. He would much rather spend an evening reading than thinking about football.
Kenny’s girlfriend, Wendy (another POV character), feels a level of guilt for the bullying and targeting of Maddy. After all, Wendy’s best friend Jules is the instigator of the pencil incident. Jules attends a party at school in blackface mocking Maddy and because of the multi-POV nature of the story, we get inside Jules’s head. At any rate, Wendy encourages Kenny to ask Maddy to the prom (much like Sue Snell in Carrie encouraged her boyfriend Tommy to take Carrie to the prom), but it isn’t out of pure selflessness. Wendy initially sees herself as a “white savior” – she doesn’t come out and say that, but all of her actions point that way.
As this novel pays very direct homage to Carrie, The Weight of Blood is also told in something of an epistolary narrative through the use of podcast and news articles in the “current” time of 2022, looking back at the events of the novel which is set in 2014. This framing lends a natural, sense of dread to the narrative which helped to propel the story. If things go down at the prom like they did for Carrie White, then these characters may not make it to that current time of 2022.
To continue the comparison/homage to Carrie, Maddy’s father Thomas is equally abusive as Carrie White’s mother, Margaret. I’ll give Jackson the edge on the other villain of the piece – Jules, Jackson’s analogue for Carrie’s primary in-school bully Chris Hargensen. There is not one single redeeming thing about this character, she is selfish, extremely racist, mean-spirited… and believable. That’s where Jackson really nails the character, Jules actions towards Maddie, her self-preservation are extremely plausible. She is the meanest of Mean Girls. Again, Jackson chose to tell the parts of the story from Jules’s point of view.
It has been a few years since I read Carrie, so I can’t make the immediate comparison, but I feel like Jackson may do a slightly better job of building empathy and sympathy for her protagonist as a victim. The hate oozing off of Thomas for his daughter Maddy is only slightly tempered by his warped sense of responsibility as her father. From the time she was born, Maddy has been a victim, she had no control over who she is, her wants, or anything really. Her father made her hide her biracial nature, Maddy was targeted even before the “pencil” incident by nearly every student as an outcast, socially awkward, poor, and just not like other kids. It isn’t until Kendrick is encouraged to ask Maddy to prom that she begins to awaken as a person. I found the Kendrick / Maddy dynamic extremely compelling.
I consumed the audiobook version, which utilized multiple narrators to convey the story, which helped to lend an immersive sense to the book. JD Jackson, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Joy Nash, Christopher Salazar & Karen Malina White brought the story to vibrant life, the multi-narrator technique gave the podcast element of the story additional heft. I particularly found the narrator who told the Kendrick parts of the story to be quite engaging. Maybe not a full-cast audiobook, but one that certainly made a great story even better. Really, that’s what narrators should do for an audiobook – elevate and enhance the story. Jackson, Mollo-Christensen, Nash, Salzar, and White did just that, they brought Jackson’s powerful words to even greater life.
I got on the audiobook bandwagon just over a decade ago and hands-down The Weight of Blood is easily one of the (at least) 10 best audiobooks I’ve read/consumed.
With it being Hallowe’en season – and an adaptation of Carrie airing on amazon prime – now is probably the perfect time to dig into The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson. The story is engaging and if you are so inclined to enjoy your reading(s) via audiobook, then the audiobook comes with the highest recommendation.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Review copy purchased.
