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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 304
Started: 25 March 2024
Finished: 25 March 2024
Summary:
Lane Roanoke was fifteen when she moved to middle-of-nowhere Kentucky to live with her gran and grandad after her mother's suicide. Upon arriving, despite the eerie stories her cousin Allegra told her about a long tradition of dead Roanoke girls, Lane was thrilled to have a home, a friend in Allegra, and more than anything to be loved, to be special, in the eyes of her grandad.
Years later, Lane learns that Allegra has gone missing, and decides to return from her life in LA to the Roanoke family property. It's eerie how little has changed, but despite the fear and hatred that chased her out of Roanoke so many years ago, she's determined to find her cousin--or find out who killed her.
Thoughts:
What a messed up story. A beautifully written story. An enticing story. I read the entire thing in a single sitting. The dual timelines, with clues and reveals unfolding in two different times and coming together to paint a full and fascinating picture, were brilliantly done. Lane's narration was also fascinating; she was not a good person, a very selfish and destructive person, but she knew it about herself, which made her seem complex and traumatized rather than intolerable, a choice I'm very glad the author made.
But this was a deeply messed up book. The Roanoke's family history was not okay, the way abuse and pleasure and physical desire and sensuality and horror and emotional need were wrapped into one was simultaneously very well done and utterly horrifying.
One thing I thought was very interesting was that the grandad's abuse was made known from the start of the novel. His abuse was, in a way, the foundation of the novel, and the reader was made to understand that very clearly, even if not in much detail at the start. This was a murder mystery, and the abuse was a horrifying factor, rather than a big reveal. I'm not sure if I liked that choice, since it gave the story a sense of horrific disgust instead of looming mystery, but it certainly was effective in the effect it created.
I do not know if I could recommend this book to another person; it was so deeply horrifying and steeped in abuse and assault and trauma and wildly messed up psyches that I would feel weird about telling another person to put those same feelings I had consumed, into their head. But I will definitely be on the lookout for other books written by Engel; she is very, very talented.