Bibliography

Plot Summary: With every fiber of her being protesting, newspaper reporter Camille Preaker returns home to Wind Gap, Missouri to get the scoop for her third rate newspaper on the kidnapping and murder of two little girls.  Not exactly the return of the prodigal daughter, her mother doesn’t welcome her, the police don’t want to share, most locals don’t want to talk and her half sister Amma blows hot and cold.  Being in her childhood home reminds her of the death of her other half sister years earlier.  As Camille gets closer to the murderer of the girls, she starts to uncover secrets from her own past  Can she confront the ghosts of the pasts to stop the horrors of the present?  Her survival may depend on it.

Critical Analysis: I had picked this book up before and never made it past the first couple of pages.  Hence the power of an audio book–I found myself thinking about listening to this book even when I was not in my car.  I considered driving around the block a few times just to get to the end of the story.

What made this title so compelling?  I think it is the combination of characters and the slow building and layering of the plot.  Camille is someone that many of us recognize–she was suffocated by her upbringing and her small town life but she managed to make it out.  She has literal and figurative scars to show for it, but she survived.  Going back to that place, her family is like a test–is she strong enough to survive now?  As for the plot, this book starts like a run of the mill mystery but becomes a Southern gothic with one of the most awful terrible and fascinating mother-daughter relationships I’ve ever encountered in contemporary fiction.  The slow discovery of current facts combined with the memory of past events lead to a train wreck of an ending from which you won’t be able to turn away.

Real people doing awful things to one another have always scared me more than monsters or men in hockey masks carrying chainsaws, and that is the case here.  You want Camille to leave and yet you want her to stay, thinking that she can uncover the real truth unlike the outsider policeman.  You want her to be strong enough to stand up for herself and you want her to leave and never come back.  Flynn has created a unique set of characters in a story so unbelievable at times that it must be true.  Older teen girls will love this title and come back to ask for more.

Readalikes:  This title reminds me a little of The Heat of the Moon by Sandra Parshall, another twisted gothic triangle of mothers, daughters, sisters and an unremembered past.

Review Excerpts: “Fans of psychological thrillers will welcome narrator/Chicago Daily Post reporter Camille Preaker with open arms….reminiscent of the works of Shirley Jackson….confidently recommend this title to readers of the genre, who will, no doubt, return asking for more. Highly recommended for all public libraries.”–Library Journal

“A savage debut thriller that renders the Electra complex electric, the mother/daughter bond a psychopathic stranglehold….a great whodunit, replete with hinting details, telling dialogue, dissembling clues….appalling, heartbreaking insight into the darkness of her women’s lives: the Stepford polish of desperate housewives, the backstabbing viciousness of drug-gobbling, sex-for-favors Mean Girls, the simmering rage bound to boil over. Piercingly effective and genuinely terrifying.”–Kirkus Reviews

“[G] ives new meaning to the term “dysfunctional family” in her chilling debut thriller.  The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending.”–Publisher’s Weekly

Reviewed from public library audio book copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography

Review: Southern Living Magazine is one of the definitive sources for Southern recipes, hospitality and entertaining for it’s readers.  Each recipe is tested and only the highest-rated recipes make it into the magazine and homes of readers around the country.  The focus of this volume is comfort food:  recipes that are made for potluck dinners, passed down generations of families, swapped between friends.  They have personal stories behind them, remember the time when…the place where…

Because of the nature of comfort food, the 165 recipes are organized less like a typical cookbook.  Recipes are organized into general categories such as comfort food classics, fresh from the garden, holidays and special occasions and so on.  For this reason, the index is essential if you are looking, say, for all the recipes with chocolate or beef or apples.  Interspersed between the recipes are short essays and reminiscences about different recipes and food traditions as recalled by editors and readers of the magazine.  As someone who loves reading head notes and extra information in cookbooks, I really enjoyed these.  There are full page full color pictures of almost every recipe, which along with the essays make this a book as much for browsing as cooking.

The recipes are, for the most part, up to Southern Living’s high standards.  I did find it odd that a recipe for pizza called for a prebaked pizza crust.  There are some recipes for very classic dishes, such as million dollar pound cake (p. 185), chicken fried steak (p. 42), caramel cake (p. 193) and sweet potato casserole (p. 146).  There are some comfort food classics with a twist.  Three-cheese pasta bake (p. 13) is an update on macaroni and cheese made with penne pasta, white cheddar, parmesan, and Gruyere cheeses.  Pimento cheese panini (p. 53) is like a sophisticated grilled cheese sandwich, and I am dying to try making my pimento cheese with jalapenos as the recipe suggests.  Barbecue sundaes (p. 263) are a fun idea, and there is an accompanying essay to go along with the recipe.

One recipe that caught my eye was Pecan Streusel Coffee Cake (p. 80) so I decided to try it out.  In this coffee cake, the streusel goes on the bottom and forms a kind of crust for the cake, which makes for an interesting combination of flavors and textures when combined with the contrasting roasted pecan topping.  The technique is interesting as well, first you take the dry ingredients and cut in the butter.  (I tried doing this, as the recipe suggests, with a pastry blender, but gave up and used my fingers instead.)  Then you press half of this mixture into the bottom of your prepared pan.  To the other half, you add the liquid ingredients and leavening to make the very thick batter.  This goes on top of the crust, and then the nuts are sprinkled over all.  Mine took a little longer than the specified time to bake, but that is probably because I used an 8 inch square pan instead of the 9 inch one as listed.  The flavor was good, if a little sweet.  I did leave out the coffee, thinking that my husband wouldn’t eat it, but next time I will put it in, as I think it would contrast the brown sugar without being too coffee flavored. One suggestion I do have is to cut it into squares while it is still warm.  The brown sugar in the crust almost caramelizes, making it hard to cut when completely cool.

I am trying very hard to convince myself I do not need to buy this cookbook, I have more cookbooks than I can use as it is.  I guess I will settle for borrowing it from the library instead.  But I am considering giving it as a Christmas gift.

Reviewed from library copy.

Plot Summary:  Olivia has had a hard life, and as winter sets in, with no one stopping to buy groceries at her little shop, and no money to restock groceries anyway, she worries about getting herself and William through the winter.  But she’s survived worse, and they will survive this too.  But then she discovers someone is killing silver wolves on her property.  She thinks she knows who is doing it, but how to prove it?  In the process of trying to get justice for the wolves, Olivia uncovers secrets that have been buried and lost for years, along with danger for those she loves and love she didn’t think she deserved.

Critical Analysis:  It took me several pages to really get into this story.  The very beginning describing the lands and the wolves and the sort of drabness of winter didn’t grab me, but I had heard from several people that this was an excellent book, so I pushed through and I was so glad I did.  Once the story shifts backwards in time to Olivia’s growing up, I became invested in her, in her relationships, friendships, loves and heartbreaks, and I had to know, how had she become what she was in the present story?  Abandoned by her mother, loved by her father, embraced by a spiritual African American community that takes care of her own.  The narrative switches back and forth between the past and the present, and as the reader sees where Olivia came from, questions start to arise about the true nature of events, resulting in more than a few surprises for the reader and Olivia, and a fiery life or death climax.  Olivia’s voice is genuine and true and real, and I ached alongside her when she lost her mother, her father, her first love, her husband, her daughter, the wolves.  Olivia is a fighter, and I found myself fighting alongside, knowing something was not quite right and yet not knowing what that was until Wall expertly revealed it.  Wall’s genius lies in peeling back the layers of the story, starting with what Olivia thinks is true and moving towards the real truth that is both surprising and expected at the same time.  I have seen this listed as a mystery, which indeed it is, but it is again another genre bending (if not breaking) title.  I hope that doesn’t mean that it will fly under the radar.

Readalikes:  I have seen some compare this title to the classic To Kill a Mockingbird.  And I can see that, in a way.  But for me, I feel like this is a better fit for those who loved The Secret Life of Bees, as Olivia reminds me a great deal of Lily, as both girls have in some ways idealized their pasts and have questions and nagging thoughts about what happened to them.  I was also reminded of Anne Rivers Siddons’ Nora, Nora, another female Southern coming of age story grounded in loss and love and finding your true self.

Review Excerpts:

Starred review: “The strong, fresh narrative voice pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go in Wall’s stunning debut…As the action moves inexorably to its explosive conclusion, Olivia must come to grips with past betrayals, thereby earning a second chance at love, redemption and long overdue justice.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“This debut novel does so much more than traditional, tightly focused mysteries. It has a powerfully, sometimes uncomfortably, realized setting; characters who seem drawn from life; and a wide-ranging plot, bursting with complications…A gripping story and a truly original voice—Wall is a new author to watch closely.–Booklist

**Note:  This book was to be published by Poisoned Pen Press when Random House bought the rights.  I am a volunteer manuscript reader for Poisoned Pen Press, but the first time I saw this title was when I was sent the ARC from Random House.