Book Review: The River Knows Your Name by Kelly Mustian

The River Knows Your Name by Kelly Mustian is one of my favorite reads of 2025. I enjoyed Mustian's first novel, The Girls in the Stilt House, and this new book is every bit as powerful. Both have storylines that made me root for the main characters (and many of the side characters) from the first page to the last.

Same as this author's previous novel, the setting is delivered artistically with gentle brushstrokes, yet also with an authority that makes me feel as though I have been there walking alongside her characters.

The River Knows Your Name is a dual-timeline historical novel, one timeline set in the 1930s and the other in the 1970s. I am not always a fan of dual-timeline stories. Sometimes they feel superfluous in historical fiction, an attempt to make the story relevant for modern-day readers.

In this book, though, the later timeline does quite a bit of work, and it's not possible to explain more without giving away the ending, so I will just say this: Trust me! It's very needful.

After I finished The River Knows Your Name, I thought long and hard about the structure of this novel. The meat of the story is the 1930s timeline. I would be surprised if anyone would disagree with me on that. But the 1970s timeline helps the story resolve and does so organically. It also adds a second point of connection for the reader. It raises the stakes of the story and the emotional intensity.

If you read this book, which I 100% recommend, I would love to hear your thoughts on the way the novel was delivered.