This mystery/thriller starts off with a young girl, seemingly abandoned, but the mother soon arrives and all is well again. Around the same time, a man is found almost dead in his apartment in a locked bathroom. Upon further investigation, there are children's toys found in the apartment, but no child. Detective Sergeant Joanna Harper leads the investigation and when the CCTV footage reveals her estranged daughter, Ruby, may be linked to the man's attack, Joanna is desperate to find Ruby first. Ruby has spent the past few months becoming friendly with a unique family where the mother, according to the father, is mentally ill and thinks she's a selkie - seals who can shed their skins and become human. Ruby initially believes what the father has told her, but the deeper she sinks into this other family, the more she questions what's a local legend and what is true.
TW/CW: domestic abuse, alcoholism
A very large theme in this story is motherhood, different types of mothers, different decisions mothers need to make, etc. I'm personally not a mother (and have no desire to ever be one) so I might have a different take away than some other readers, but I really liked the way that motherhood isn't shown as being some altruistic life calling. All of the mothers in this book (and there are 5) are complex and flawed because they're human and that complexity includes the mothering-aspects of their lives. I also liked now not all of them are biological mothers and there's an interesting discussion in the later parts of the book around what being a 'good' mother entails and if mothers should be self sacrificing or not for their children because as one character points out - if I sacrifice myself for my child, they will no longer have a mother so shouldn't I protect myself first so that I'm around longer to protect them. All that being said, this is still a very satisfying mystery/thriller read even if motherhood is something you're completely not interested in but I wanted to point out this one very prominent theme because I know mothers and motherhood can be sensitive topics for readers.
The characters and character relationships in this book were great. Golding does a fantastic job of giving us character details right upfront which helped ground me and feel like I really knew these characters. These character details come in such a seamless way that it never felt heavy handed or overly telling instead of showing. I also really enjoyed how those initial character details were deepened as the story progressed and we learned more layers to that detail. As a small, non-spoilery example, Ruby plays the violin semi-professionally and we see her practicing and composing at the beginning of the book. But then, later, we find out that her parents made her keep taking lessons as a child even when she wanted to quit. Throughout most of the book, we're hopping between the POVs of Ruby and Joanna and both women were equally interesting and well developed. As the plot progressed, we see both Ruby and Joanna growing as people and both start to figure out what is important to each of them. Their relationships with the side characters were also pretty well developed and those relationships were used to show some of the personal growth that they were both going through.
The narrative structure was really fun and I think really helped to keep the overall pacing engaging. The first scene in the book is the child being abandoned and then we start switching between Ruby and Joanna and different times within the last year and we see the lead up to how and why that child was abandoned. Most of Joanna's chapters were in the present where she is investigating the attack on the man in the apartment and most of Ruby's chapters are in the past where she's integrating herself into this other family. Obviously, the two plot lines are going to converge at some point and it is a fun journey to see how, exactly, that is going to be done. There's a third POV introduced about halfway through that really adds a great layer of tension into the plot. I've found in some books with similar timeline/POV jumps that it can get annoying when we're about to see a big reveal in one plot line but then switch at the last minute for a contrived 'cliffhanger' effect. I didn't find that to be the case with this book, in fact, it is almost the opposite where each chapter felt very complete and if there was a reveal, it was well integrated into the chapter so while we did want to know more, there wasn't a frustrating amount of cliffhangers to deal with. If anything, the reveals in one timeline just made me want to switch to the other timeline to see either the buildup or the fallout of that same plot point reveal.
The reveals were fantastic and were paced perfectly. Specifically, there were 3 reveals back to back to back within a certain 10% window of the book that I was just in awe of. Those three reveals completely changed the direction of the narrative as well as my perspective on multiple characters. I also felt the reveals were well hinted at ahead of time so nothing felt like it was coming completely out of left field. Instead, it felt like the puzzle pieces I was gathering finally all fell into place and I could start to see a part of the larger picture. This story was a great melding of domestic thriller, detective mystery, and a little bit of a third sub-genre that I think would be a spoiler if I mentioned it. The reveals and twists, as well, were well balanced between the typical reveals you'd expect in each of those different sub-genres.
Overall, I really loved this book - the characters, relationships, themes, pacing, and reveals were all dialed in perfectly for my reading tastes. I will be going back and reading Golding's debut novel from 2019 for sure.
Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is November 9, 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment