Tuesday, July 17, 2018

A Family Torn Apart by the Past


Terrible things happened at the boys school behind the Fielding Mansion when Lane’s father was the director. She lived in the mansion and couldn’t wait to escape her father’s misdeeds and her own trouble. She ran away and married immediately after high school graduation. Now she’s living in the Fielding Mansion with her parents with two daughters trying to heal from a divorce she didn’t want.

Lane is drinking too much trying to forget and is ignoring the problems of her daughters. When a girl disappears and then Annalee, Lane’s older daughter, disappears, the town remembers another girl who disappeared years ago. Now there’s talk of a serial killer. Lane is frantic to find Annalee and to protect her younger daughter, Talley.

I found this book rather slow. The plot was good, but the action was drawn out with multiple narrators. One of the confusing aspects was having Daryl, a strange boy who befriends Talley, tell his story in fragments that are out of the time sequence of the unfolding events.

The background is a small town where everyone remembers your past and it can seep into the present. Lane tries to hide from it with too much alcohol until she has to confront the problems that still exist; some of her own making.

The descriptions of the old mansion and the boys school are suitably haunting. This book is almost written like a gothic or a paranormal. There is romance and character development, but it’s the plot that drives the story. If you like a plot that relies on mysteries from this past, you may enjoy this book.

I received this book from Dutton for this review.


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