Tag Archives: 2016

That Night – Chevy Stevens

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I suppose that some fans of psychological suspense might call BC-based Chevy Stevens the Canadian Gillian that nightFlynn – except that, in my opinion, Flynn takes the prose prize and the plotting prize and, well, all the prizes, really. Sorry, Chevy.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Stevens. The first, Still Missing, won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel in 2011. I liked Still Missing, actually, though – if memory serves – I wasn’t keen on its ending. I didn’t like anything about That Night, although I wanted to. I didn’t abandon it to my Book Graveyard, though,  and I guess that’s saying something. Maybe it’s because Stevens is Canadian.

Toni Murphy and her boyfriend, Ryan Walker,  are in prison for the murder of Toni’s younger sister, Nicole. They maintain their innocence and while the evidence against them is circumstantial at best, they’ve both been locked away for fifteen years. (Not in the same institution, obviously.) The novel weaves between the events leading up to Nicole’s horrific murder, Toni’s incarceration and ultimate release (after serving her full sentence) and her attempts to reintegrate herself into society in her hometown of Campbell River, a town on Vancouver Island.

Toni is the problem child and Ryan is the son of a drunken criminal – so a bad boy by blood. Everyone seems to be waiting for them to get into trouble even though Toni seems more like a victim than a victimizer. She and Ryan are just waiting for high school to be over so they can get on with their lives together. Toni is especially anxious to get out of Dodge because of Shauna McKinney. “Most of the girls in our class either feared her or desperately wanted to be her friend, which I guess was kind of the same thing in the end,” Toni observes. Toni and Shauna used to be friends, but a misunderstanding over a boy changed all that and now Shauna does whatever it takes to make life living hell for Toni. Clearly, Toni is not as bad-ass as people think she is.

Nicole is the golden girl, the  mom’s favoured daughter because of her grades and sunny disposition. Until she starts hanging out with Shauna and her hench-women. Then she’s sneaking out of the house, coming home drunk and acting all weird.

Stevens’ first person narration allows us to see Toni’s journey through her final months in high school and then a sped up fifteen years in the big house where we watch Toni negotiate her way through a system that is bound to fail her. She makes friends; she makes enemies, and finally she is paroled. One of the conditions of her parole is that she has no contact with Ryan, who has also been released and who has also headed back to Campbell River. Despite the no contact rule which, if broken, has the potential to send them back to jail,  Toni and Ryan are determined to find out what really happened to Nicole.

Mostly I didn’t like That Night because I didn’t care about any of the characters. Toni’s parents were particularly irksome. Yes, it’s true that they’ve lost one daughter at, supposedly, the hands of another. But she swears she didn’t do it. How about a little faith, people?

When the true story of what happens is finally revealed, all the pieces click into place with precision, but ultimately this is less a mystery and more a story (sort of) of redemption. I found the writing a bit clunky – lots of exposition – and the characterizations superficial. For me, That Night wasn’t all that.

 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – April Genevieve Tucholke

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Seventeen-year-old Violet and her twin brother, Luke, live in a crumbling mansion in the town of Echo, somewhere on the coast of the Eastern United States. Their parents are absent, artists traipsing through Europe, so Vi and Luke are left to fend for themselves in the house built by their rich great grandparents. The money is long gone and now the house is no longer “dignified and elegant and great and beautiful.” Vi calls it Citizen Kane, but mostly because her grandmother, Freddie, had given it the nickname. Now Freddie is gone and so is the rest of the money Vi’s parents had left for her and Luke to live off until they returned from Europe. That’s the reason Vi decides to rent the guest house and that’s how River comes into her life. between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea

He was not tall – less than six feet, maybe – and he was strong, and lean. He had thick, dark brown hair, which was wavy and parted at the side…until the sea wind lifted it and blew it across his forehead and tangled it all up. I liked his face on sight.

River’s arrival shakes things up for Vi. She’s an introspective girl, prone to solitude and tucking herself away with a volume of Nathaniel Hawthorn short stories. Her one friend, Sunshine (the daughter of hippies who live down the road) is more a friend of proximity than anything else.

April Genevieve Tucholke’s YA novel Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a strange hybrid of gothic romance and suspense thriller. Although Vi is naive, she’s no – wait for it – shrinking violet. River’s just about the most exciting thing to happen in Echo in her whole life. The problem is that shortly after his arrival strange things start to happen. For one thing, a little girl goes missing and children in town claim to have seen the devil. Then the town drunk slits his own throat, in broad day-light, in the town square. Then River’s brother, Neely, shows up and Vi discovers that River has a tendency to lie about just about everything.

There are some truly creepy moments in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and, like Vi, you’ll be conflicted about River’s motives and actions. I don’t want to say too much about what’s going on because it’ll be more fun if you find out for yourself. Let’s just say, there’s some nasty energy in Echo and this book has a kick-ass denouement. There is a second book, Between the Spark and the Burn and according to Tucholke there are no plans for a third (praise the book gods!) so I will probably purchase the second book just to see what happens.

Lovely writing and page-turning fun makes Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea a winner.

Books, books and more books.

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Listen here.

So usually when I am preparing for a visit to Info AM, I try to think of a theme – something to hold all my bookish thoughts together. That’s probably the teacher in me – trying to make connections. Not going to happen today – today I just want to talk about some books I’ve read recently that I’ve really loved.

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng everything

So this was my book club pick this year. I had such a hard time picking because I left it really late. This book was on my tbr shelf already and there were loads of copies at the book store and it had received copious praise, so it met all the requirements. It was an amazing book.

The book opens “Lydia is dead” and then it unspools the story of Lydia Lee, her younger sister, Hannah, and older brother Nathan and their parents Marilyn and James. It’s 1970s Ohio. Lydia’s story can’t be told without understanding Marilyn and James’ story…so we hear about Marilyn who is brilliant and won a scholarship to Radcliff. She’s on her way to becoming a doctor when she meets James, a fourth year graduate student in history. He’s Chinese. They fall in love, in part, because they recognize the “otherness” in each other. It’s the 50s, remember. So, Marilyn’s dreams have been deferred and she hoists all her failed ambition on Lydia. This is a tremendously powerful novel about family – and the things that we keep from the people we love the most. You know, we often talk about the transformative power of fiction – the ability of a story to just get under your skin and shake something loose and this book certainly did that for me. I came of age in the 70s, so I recognized the pop culture references and the whole book just felt familiar to me. But beyond that, it’s a mystery – like, what happened to Lydia – but it’s also about our need to follow our own path, which is sometimes very difficult to do. I felt this book in my heart and my gut. So good.

 

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock – Matthew Quick

forgive meQuick might be better known for his novel (and the subsequent film) Silver Linings Playbook. This is a YA novel about a tricky subject – a book that, I think, has the potential to articulate something many of its readers might not be able to talk about. What do I do when life it just utterly miserable and I no longer have the will to go on?

Well, the answer to that question for 18-year-old Leonard Peacock is to pack his grandfather’s P38 WW2 handgun in his bookbag and head to school where he first intends to kill his former best friend, Asher, and then take his own life.

You know sometimes you start reading a book and you just fall in love with a character – yep, I loved Leonard from the start. He’s wry and self-deprecating and brutally honest. He’s also in terrible emotional distress. His mother has virtually abandoned him to pursue a career in fashion design; his father – a former rock star – is on the lam from the IRS. Leonard, although he is 18, is pretty much left to his own devices. So, on the day he decides to end it, he wraps some gifts and sets off to first visit the handful of people who have made a difference in his life including the old man who lives next door with whom he watches classic films and the one teacher at his school who actually looks him in the eye. Think about that – going through your whole day without anyone really looking at you.

Anyway – this is a fine book, quirky and funny and heart-breaking and hopeful. High school can be really hard for some kids – it seems interminable and pointless and teenagers have interior lives to which adults are not privy. This book would certainly speak to those kids. Loved it.

I ran out of time and therefore couldn’t talk about the next two books:

For my third choice I was torn between two books I read – one YA and one not, so I am going to briefly talk about them both because I couldn’t decide. Of their type they were both really good.

The first one is The Book of You by Claire Kendall. book of you

I started it and finished it pretty much in one sitting. The story is not original – woman has a one night stand with a guy she works with who turns out to be a psychopathic stalker times a million. It’s a really timely story because woven into Clarissa’s narrative is the court case she’s on jury duty for – a woman with a dodgy past who has been raped and the guys who did it are on trial. Kendall has some interesting observations about victim blaming. Not only is Clarissa reluctant to go to the police until she has gathered sufficient evidence against her stalker, we also have to hear the horrific details about the rape-victim…and her past being called into question as a way to dismiss the charges against her attackers. Total page-turner, well-written, I’d warn readers that it is graphic.

Second book is The Replacement by Breanna Yovanoff

7507908This was quite unlike anything I’ve read in the YA genre. Sort of a hybrid horror/fantasy novel. Sixteen year old Mackie is a replacement. He was swapped with the real Mackie when they were infants. He can’t stand blood or metal or go to church. The reason for the swap is a weird bargain the townsfolk have made with the House of Mayhem, a strange underground world ruled by The Morrigan, a child-like creature. In return for human babies, Gentry flourishes. But then when the little sister of a classmate goes missing, Mackie has to decide just how human he really is. It’s a creepy, compelling story that was quite unlike anything else I’ve ever read…which is cool in YA because genres tend to come in waves.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading recently. What’s on your nightstand?

The Husband’s Secret – Liane Moriarty

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It’s no secret to the ladies in my book club: I didn’t like Liane Moriarty’s novel The Husband’s Secret. At all. But here’s the thing, the critics loved it. Geesh, even Anne Lamott called it “smart, wise, funny.” husband

The husband in question in The Husband’s Secret is Cecilia’s husband,  John-Paul Fitzpatrick, he of the “deep, warm and comforting” voice; hopeless at the minutiae of daily life, but “he took care of his wife and daughters, in that old-fashioned, responsible I-am-the-man-and-this-is-my-job way.”  One day, while searching in the attic for a little piece of the Berlin Wall (cue metaphor alert) to give to her  daughter, Esther, who has recently shown an interest, Cecilia discovers  (by accident…or is it fate?)  an envelope upon which is written: For my wife Cecilia Fitzpatrick,  To be opened only in the event of my death.

In another part of town is Rachel, a woman whose life has been forever coloured by the death of her teenage daughter, Janie, some twenty-eight years ago. She has a son, Rob, and daughter-in-law, Lauren and a two-year-old grandson, Jacob. Rob and Lauren have just told Rachel that they are moving to New York to take advantage of a terrific job opportunity for Lauren. Jacob is the light of Rachel’s life and the news is devastating to her – never mind that she has discounted Rob and Lauren forever, because – you know – she’s grieving. Still. Always.

The third woman to figure in Moriarty’s over-stuffed plot is Tess, who has recently come home with her young son, Liam,  because her husband, Will, and cousin, Felicity, (who are also her business partners) have just revealed that they have fallen in love. Ouch.

Really, there’s enough going on in The Husband’s Secret to fuel three novels, but Moriarty chooses, instead, to tangle the fates of all these three women together and also try to comment on infidelity, love, marriage, family, parenting, friendship, and how to make a million bucks selling Tupperware.

A novel like this, let’s call it domestic drama, depends on one thing and one thing alone and that’s believability. I didn’t believe any of these characters, nor care about them one iota. The book seemed interminable to me, over 400 pages bookended with a prologue and epilogue that asks you to consider the myriad of ways your life might have gone had you only chosen a different path. But as Robert Frost’s misunderstood poem “The Road Not Taken” warns us “the passing there/ Had worn them really about the same.” No matter which path you choose in life,  a belief in fate is also a belief that everything turns out as it should.

The Husband’s Secret is an “everything but the kitchen sink” novel that tries hard to be all things to all readers: mystery (though not so much for careful readers), and family drama, with a little bit of sex thrown in for good measure. When one of my friends joked “just wait until you get to the aliens,” I actually considered she might be telling the truth.

A world of no.

 

Coming Up For Air – Patti Callahan Henry

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Patti Callahan Henry’s heroines all have the same problem: they are women of a certain age at a crossroads in their lives. For Amy, the protagonist in my first Henry novel Losing the Moon, it’s the unexpected reunion with her college boyfriend, Nick. In Where the River Runs  it’s the emotions rekindled by revisiting a tragedy from Meridy’s youth.

Then there’s Ellie Calvin, the main character in Coming Up For Air. Ellie realizes at her coming-up-for-airmother’s funeral that she no longer loves her husband, Rusty. Truth be told, he’s a bit of a douche, a passive aggressive clout from the right side of the tracks. What Ellie really longs for is Hutch, her “bad boy” college boyfriend. Of course, she doesn’t know that just yet. It’s not until he’s suddenly standing in front of her and

…I saw his face. Twenty years later, minutes and hours and days rearranged to allow me to see him again as if time hadn’t passed at all. Mostly I saw his eyes: almond shaped and kind, brown with green underneath, as if the eyes had meant to be the color of forest ferns and then at the last minute changed their mind.

As a reader, you pretty much know what’s going to happen about then – all that remains to be seen is just how meandering the journey. In this instance, Hutch is an historian and he’s been working on an exhibit at the Atlanta History Centre, an exhibit honouring some of the South’s great dames – in which Ellie’s mother, Lillian,  figures prominently. Ellie has had a prickly relationship with her mother. Much of the acrimony,  ironically, involved Hutch.

Then Ellie finds a journal her mother kept. The entries, one a year, reveal that Ellie’s mother wasn’t always the proper and stiff woman Ellie had grown up with. In fact, she’d had a deep and passionate love affair  with a man identified only as Him before she’d married Ellie’s father. (Not sure why Him is capitalized.)  Furthermore, she’d been involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Obviously, Ellie and Hutch need to find out what all this means and so they head down to the Alabama coast where Lillian’s best friend, Ms. Birdie, lives. Ms. Birdie also happens to be Ellie’s best friend’s mom…so, see how that all works out? Of course, Ms. Birdie is reluctant to tell Ellie anything much. There’s still half a book to get through, after all.

I read the whole thing, of course I did. It’s not because it’s full of hot sex, either. Hutch and Ellie barely exchange a platonic kiss. It’s not because I particularly cared about any of the characters. Even the revelation of who the mysterious Him was is a disappointment. I was hoping Lillian had been really brave.

I guess I didn’t give up on Coming Up For Air because the romantic in me wants to see the potential for love at a certain age. I’m older than Ellie and I don’t have a marriage to walk away from anymore, but I do — sometimes — long for that chemical connection. Of course, I don’t have pots of money allowing me to step away from my life and go live in a magical cottage on the water. I also don’t have a “one-that-got-away” college boyfriend.

If our lives are a story and we are characters in that story, perhaps Ellie’s Uncle Cotton’s question is valid: “What’s the next best thing to happen here?”

Unfortunately, I think Henry took the path most traveled, but I guess if you like happily-ever-after that’s probably okay.

Cowboy – Sara Davidson

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Sara Davidson‘s memoir Cowboy chronicles her affair with a cowboy — yes, they are real — in the mid 90s. Davidson is a best-selling novelist (Loose Change), television writer (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) and biographer (Rock Hudson, Joan Didion).

Davidson meets Zack (not his real name) at a cowboy poetry and music festival in Elko, cowboy Nevada. Since Davidson was working on Dr. Quinn at the time, she convinced her co-worker to make the journey. Their first meeting, at a stall where Zack is selling his hand-crafted bridles and reins is prickly, to say the least. Later, though, despite her claims that Zack is “a yokel, an insolent yokel” Davidson remarks that he has “good hands” to which Zack responds that he has “magic hands.” Oh, Bessie.

Davidson and Zack have virtually nothing in common. He’s ten years younger, divorced with three kids. He’s mostly unemployed, making money where and when he can. Davidson, also divorced with a son, 10, and a daughter, 11, has a  successful career. Zack isn’t remotely worldly; although he was  — at one time — considering a career as an engineer, the ‘cowboy’ lifestyle grabbed him by the horns — so to speak — and never let him go. He can’t spell and doesn’t know who Anne Frank is, two details which drive wordsmith Davidson crazy. Nevertheless, there is a spark between them that Davidson can’t (or won’t – fine line) ignore.

Cowboy is, I suppose, that classic ‘fish out of water’ story. How are these two crazy kids (ahem) ever going to make it work? Should they even try? The thing is, once they get over the initial awkwardness they end up having crazy sex all the freakin’ time. I suppose as a woman of a certain age, it would be hard to say no — even if you have misgivings on a whole lot of other levels.

For one thing, after the initial blush has worn off, Davidson’s kids, Gabriel and Sophie, are hateful to Zack. They complain about his smoking (although he doesn’t do it in the house), they say he yells at them when their mom isn’t home. They are rude and disagreeable whenever he’s around.

Then there’s the money issue: Zack never has any. Davidson’s a modern woman, sure, but every once in a while you’d like your partner to at least pay his share.

In a weird way, though, Davidson and Zack make an odd kind of sense. He’s laid back, attentive and honest; she’s high strung and stressed out. They balance each other out — sort of. So I have to say that I was rooting for them by the end of Cowboy.

What once seemed ludicrous and impossible has become the norm, although, as Zack puts it, “normal’s a relative term.” At times, I ask myself, how did this happen? How did I steer so far from the conventional track?

Sadly, I don’t think they are still together.

I’d like to think, however,  that as a divorced woman of a certain age whose children are on the precipice of leaving the nest, there’s a Zack out there for me. He doesn’t have to be a cowboy. Just a decent guy who is kind and thoughtful. Magic hands wouldn’t hurt, either.

 

The Widow – Fiona Barton

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Although I often enter book giveaways on Good Reads, I never win. That is until a couple weeks ago when an ARC of Fiona Barton’s novel The Widow showed up at my door compliments of Penguin Random House Canada. The book was cleverly packaged in an ‘evidence bag’ along with a package of Skittles. Awesome to get a book in the mail, but Skittles, too. Jackpot!

widowI seem to be on a roll these days, reading books I can’t seem to put down. I motored through The Widow in a couple of days.  Although the subject matter (porn) may not appeal to everyone, rest assured that there’s no graphic content in Barton’s book. Your imagination will fill in the gaps, trust me.

Jean and Glen Taylor are an average thirty-something couple living in England. Jean is a hairdresser and Glen, a banker. They are unremarkable  until they come under the scrutiny of the police because of the disappearance of a little girl, Bella, who has gone missing from her front garden.

Told from various viewpoints, The Widow mostly revolves around Jean as she decides whether or not to share her story with the press. Glen has been killed, “knocked down by a bus just outside Sainsbury’s” and now Jean no longer has to keep his secrets or put up with his “nonsense.”

When we are not with Jean, we’re with Kate, the reporter who is trying to convince Jean to tell her side of things or Bob Sparkes, the police detective trying to figure out what happened to little Bella. It’s Bella’s disappearance that drives Kate and Bob, although each of them views the crime from a different perspective. As Sparkes follows a trail of clues, many of which don’t pan out, Jean reveals her own misgivings about Glen and what he does on the computer in the spare room. Slowly she unravels the story of her marriage and while she may seem like a victim, there is something unreliable about her narrative. She admits “I had to keep his secrets as well as mine.”

The Widow delves into the sordid world of online pornography, skeezy Internet clubs where men hide in booths to pay-per-view and magazines sold out of the back of trunks at gas stations on the motorway. When Jean finally learns about her husband’s preferences

he told me it wasn’t his fault. He’d been drawn into online porn by the Internet – they shouldn’t allow these things on the Web. It was a trap for innocent men. He’d become addicted to it – “It’s a medical condition, Jeanie, an addiction.” But he’d never looked at children. Those images just ended up on his computer – like a virus.

Whether or not Jean suspected Glen of anything is one of the key elements that will keep you turning the pages. Barton’s crisp, no-nonsense prose is another. The Widow will keep you turning the pages way past your bedtime.

 

The Replacement – Brenna Yovanoff

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Brenna Yovanoff’s YA novel The Replacement is quite unlike anything I have read before, which is a good thing. It was well-reviewed when it debuted in 2010 and I have been wanting to read it for a while. I was particularly intrigued by the cover, which is creepy, although I try not to chose books based on their cover alone – that has lead me down a few crap book paths.

Gentry isn’t like other places and Mackie isn’t like other 16-year-olds. He’s a replacement,  left in the crib of a human baby who was spirited away by the strange inhabitants of the the labyrinthine world beneath Gentry.

7507908Mackie lives with his older sister, Emma and his parents. He has a best friend, Roswell. He has a crush on a pretty girl, Alice. But he also can’t abide blood. Or get close to anything made of stainless steel. Or go to church, even though his father is a preacher.

Mackie knows he is different. “I dream of fields,” he says, “dark tunnels, but nothing is clear. I dream that a dark shape puts me in the crib, puts a hand over my mouth, and whispers in my ear. Shh, it says. And, Wait. “

The way his sister tells it, someone took her real brother in the middle of the night when she was four years old.

When she reaches her hand between the bars, the thing in the crib moves closer. It tries to bite her and she takes her hand out again but doesn’t back away. They spend all night looking at each other in the dark. In the morning, the thing is still crouched on the lamb-and-duckling mattress pad, staring at her. It isn’t her brother.

When the little sister of Mackie’s classmate, Tate,  goes missing, Mackie is forced to confront his own origin story and this leads him the The House of Mayhem and The Morrigan, a girl who rules there and whose “jagged teeth and tiny size made her seem more implausible, more impossible than all the rest.” All the rest of what, you might ask? Yeah, that would be the living dead girls. The Morrigan  tells him “We were so pleased that you survived childhood. Castoffs generally don’t.”

When Tate asks for Mackie’s help, he is reluctant; he’s got his own problems. But when The Morrigan offers to help Mackie feel better even he can’t resist. There is a strange barter system between Mayhem and Gentry: Mayhem thrives on adulation. But Mayhem isn’t the only world beneath the town. The Morrigan has a sister, and she thrives on blood sacrifice.

Mackie doesn’t fit in, but  whether or not Yovanoff meant for his journey to be a metaphor (like Joss Whedon’s monsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) hardly matters because The Replacement is a thrill ride.

Great book.

The Book of You – Claire Kendal

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You know how sometimes you start a book and you just can’t put it down – that’s what happened when I started reading Claire Kendal’s debut novel The Book of You. I mean, it’s not an original story – woman sleeps with guy after a bad break up and guy turns out to be a psychopathic stalker – but Kendal’s novel had an extra layer of creep, plus some interesting things to say about victim-blaming.

Thirty-eight-year-old Clarissa works as an administrator at the university in Bath. Her book of youaffair with Henry, a professor, has recently ended. Rafe also works at the university and has just published a new book on fairy tales and it is at his book launch that Clarissa drinks too much. She hadn’t really wanted to go, but he’d sent her three invitations. Hello, alarm bells.

“It is the night that I make the very big mistake of sleeping with you,” she writes in her journal. She has decided to follow the advice from the literature on stalkers and document everything. Clarissa knows she has to build a case before she can even consider going to the police.

I am trying to piece it all together. I am trying to fill in the gaps. I am trying to recollect the things you did before this morning, when I started to record it all. I don’t want to miss out a single bit of evidence – I can’t afford to. But doing this forces me to relive it. Doing this keeps you with me, which is exactly where I don’t want to be.

Everything about Rafe is skin-crawlingly-creepy.

“It makes me want to scream, the way you say my name all the time,” Clarissa writes. And Rafe has plenty of opportunities to say it. He is everywhere: outside her apartment, lurking at train stations, waiting for her outside the court room where she is on jury duty. He sends her things: chocolates, notes, flowers. He calls and texts her dozens of times. He rallies her friends against her, isolates her further. He makes Clarissa question her own sanity.

If there is a bright spot in Clarissa’s day, it is the time she spends in court, listening to the rather horrific details of a violent drug-related rape. It is here where she meets fellow-juror, Robert, a firefighter who recently lost his wife. As she and Robert become closer, Rafe becomes more aggressive.

The Book of You is an edge-of-your-seat thriller which also happens to be well-written. Clarissa refuses to let herself be a victim, but she is human and doesn’t always make the right choices. I never once thought “What?! Don’t do that!” though – which is certainly due to Kendal’s skill.

It’s a bit graphic, so if that’s not your thing perhaps this isn’t the book for you. However, I couldn’t put it down and highly recommend it.

 

 

The Winter People – Jennifer McMahon

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A few years back I read Jennifer McMahon’s debut novel Promise Not To Tell, and I enjoyed it a great deal. A couple years after that I read McMahon’s novel Dismantled, a book I did not like one bit. Now I’ve just finished reading The Winter People, and I have to say it falls sort of in between.winterThe Winter People is a story which bounces between present day and 1908. In the past, Sara Harrison Shea lives on the farm where she grew up with her husband, Martin, and her little girl, Gertie. West Hall, Vermont is well-known for its mysteries and ghost stories, many of which center around Sara and her family farm, a house filled with secret places and, well, secrets.

In her diary, Sara writes “The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old.”

I had heard about sleepers; there was even a game we played in the schoolyard in which one child  would be laid out dead in a circle of violets and forget-me-nots. Then someone would lean down and whisper magic words in the dead girl’s ear, and she would rise and chase all the other children. The first one she caught would be the next to die.

Turns out, though, there is dark magic and Sara’s Auntie, an Indian woman who cared for Sara’s dying mother before she started sleeping with Sara’s widowed father promises to “write it all down, everything I know about sleepers.” In case it’s not obvious, sleepers are people brought back from the dead, but they only exist for seven days, you, know, unless they shed blood during that time – then they live forever.

In the present, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her little sister, Fawn. One morning Ruthie gets up to discover her mother is missing. Cold tea on the table, truck in the barn – vanished into thin air.

Then there’s Katherine. She’s still grieving the loss of her son, Austin, when her husband, Gary, is killed in a car accident. Thing is, he told her he was going to be one place and he was actually in West Hall. Last seen: Lou Lou’s Cafe with Alice.

These disparate threads do come together by novel’s end, but I lost interest about half-way through. The Winter People is clearly meant to be a ghost story, but once crazy Candace shows up, intent on getting the missing pages of Sara’s diary so she can sell the secret of raising the dead so she can fight for custody of her son -yeah, right about then I was…c’mon. Oh, plus there’s a gun. Two guns actually. And other crazy shenanigans. And then, a lot of exposition to tie up those pesky loose ends.

When McMahon stuck to the ghost stuff…there were some creepy moments, but The Winter People is nowhere near as good as Promise Not To Tell.