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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this mystery that had some surprises at the end. I felt I was at a plantation in the Deep South on the bayou
Soon after the death of her 4 year old son, New York journalist Charlie travels to a small Louisiana town in order to investigate a decades-old cold case in which a small boy from a prominent family mysteriously vanished. As it happens, Charlie also gets visions from the future involving children coming to harm, as well as visits from children long gone.
There were things I liked about this book. The story had promise, and the writing itself was mostly pretty good. But a lot of other things about it really grated on me, like:
* The tropes. Don't get me wrong; tropes can be used effectively, but there were too many in this story that felt heavy-hand. (Grandma has a supernatural gift which she has passed on to a troubled granddaughter, the gift having skipped the ambivalent intervening generation; the character who could easily clear up everything if only she were mentally whole; a few others that also happen to be spoilers.)
* The stereotypes. They were painful, and there were a lot of them (particularly the ones pertaining to Southerners, as a Southerner myself). In particular, a lot of the Southern people were depicted as simple, bumbling, or shallow.
* The main character. Not only are we supposed to identify with her as the protagonist, but her kid just died so we're also suppose to feel sympathetic for her on that count. Unfortunately, she comes across as such a snobby, classist, unlikable person that it's hard to root for her.
* That thing where you don't trust the readers to pick up on subtlety so you spell too many things out, the result being that the reader's figured everything out 75% of the way through and wonders how the hell the main character is so dense.
* That device where you don't outright state something, but imply it so heavily and have the main character go along with it so quickly and unflinchingly that the reader kind of accepts it as having been stated outright. This can work brilliantly, but when you do it over and over and over, and the main character turns out to be wrong every.single.time, the result is that you start to notice when things have been heavily implied but not stated, and if the main character goes along with it, you immediately assume the opposite. By 2/3 of the way through the book, this started to make Charlie sound at best sort of dumb and at worst paranoid and/or crazy.
Still, I like a good mystery, and it was an interesting enough story that I hung in all the way to the end.
There were things I liked about this book. The story had promise, and the writing itself was mostly pretty good. But a lot of other things about it really grated on me, like:
* The tropes. Don't get me wrong; tropes can be used effectively, but there were too many in this story that felt heavy-hand. (Grandma has a supernatural gift which she has passed on to a troubled granddaughter, the gift having skipped the ambivalent intervening generation; the character who could easily clear up everything if only she were mentally whole; a few others that also happen to be spoilers.)
* The stereotypes. They were painful, and there were a lot of them (particularly the ones pertaining to Southerners, as a Southerner myself). In particular, a lot of the Southern people were depicted as simple, bumbling, or shallow.
* The main character. Not only are we supposed to identify with her as the protagonist, but her kid just died so we're also suppose to feel sympathetic for her on that count. Unfortunately, she comes across as such a snobby, classist, unlikable person that it's hard to root for her.
* That thing where you don't trust the readers to pick up on subtlety so you spell too many things out, the result being that the reader's figured everything out 75% of the way through and wonders how the hell the main character is so dense.
* That device where you don't outright state something, but imply it so heavily and have the main character go along with it so quickly and unflinchingly that the reader kind of accepts it as having been stated outright. This can work brilliantly, but when you do it over and over and over, and the main character turns out to be wrong every.single.time, the result is that you start to notice when things have been heavily implied but not stated, and if the main character goes along with it, you immediately assume the opposite. By 2/3 of the way through the book, this started to make Charlie sound at best sort of dumb and at worst paranoid and/or crazy.
Still, I like a good mystery, and it was an interesting enough story that I hung in all the way to the end.
A touch of romance, a sprinkling of psychic powers and a whole lot of family drama, The Gates of Evangeline was an enjoyable quick read with a likable enough protagonist, an engaging enough mystery, and the promise of an even better follow up.
Books like this one are self-contained; there are X amount of things that can happen in Y amount of pages. To that end, very few books actually shock me. The twists have a limited amount of pages in which they can occur but there also has to be sufficient breadcrumbing for them to make sense in hindsight.
I guessed the twist the second it was mentioned that Noah and Gabriel were the same age, and this sentence is being written a third of the way into the book because I’m just that confident in my guess. With that said, it’s not the shock that makes a twist worthwhile, rather it’s the execution, because as I said, so few books actually shock me. The timing of the reveal and the slow burn of learning more about Gabriel’s parents was done very well and is easily the book’s best attribute. While the Hettie/Sean stuff was not unpredictable, everything was tied together perfectly.
My one prevailing issue I had was these little moments in Charlie’s head that were very off-putting. The incredible amount of disdain Charlie has for these southern folk, from the “gun-toting, deer-hunting” Noah, to the cook Leeann, described as “an overweight, uneducated twenty-three-year-old unwed mother who had lived her entire life in Chicory, Louisiana... never been out of state, and her only goals in life are to marry her hard-to-pin-down boyfriend and have more children” made me like her so much less. I grew up in literally the same town (Stamford, CT) as she is supposed to be from and the snotty, arrogant, intolerably liberal way the author portrays her protagonist at times just doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, homophobia is objectively bad, but God forbid someone is licensed to carry a gun, or someones’ highest aspiration is to be a wife and mother. And we’re supposed to warm over when Charlie accepts these people, flaws and all? You don’t get extra credit for being accepting of different cultures.
I enjoyed the way Young handled the psychic aspect of the story though it could’ve done without the inherited aspect. Grandma kinda sorta having powers really didn’t add anything to the story for me. It seems this book is part of a trilogy so hopefully Charlie will be a bit less uppity in her New Englander elitism in the next book.
Books like this one are self-contained; there are X amount of things that can happen in Y amount of pages. To that end, very few books actually shock me. The twists have a limited amount of pages in which they can occur but there also has to be sufficient breadcrumbing for them to make sense in hindsight.
I guessed the twist the second it was mentioned that Noah and Gabriel were the same age, and this sentence is being written a third of the way into the book because I’m just that confident in my guess. With that said, it’s not the shock that makes a twist worthwhile, rather it’s the execution, because as I said, so few books actually shock me. The timing of the reveal and the slow burn of learning more about Gabriel’s parents was done very well and is easily the book’s best attribute. While the Hettie/Sean stuff was not unpredictable, everything was tied together perfectly.
My one prevailing issue I had was these little moments in Charlie’s head that were very off-putting. The incredible amount of disdain Charlie has for these southern folk, from the “gun-toting, deer-hunting” Noah, to the cook Leeann, described as “an overweight, uneducated twenty-three-year-old unwed mother who had lived her entire life in Chicory, Louisiana... never been out of state, and her only goals in life are to marry her hard-to-pin-down boyfriend and have more children” made me like her so much less. I grew up in literally the same town (Stamford, CT) as she is supposed to be from and the snotty, arrogant, intolerably liberal way the author portrays her protagonist at times just doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, homophobia is objectively bad, but God forbid someone is licensed to carry a gun, or someones’ highest aspiration is to be a wife and mother. And we’re supposed to warm over when Charlie accepts these people, flaws and all? You don’t get extra credit for being accepting of different cultures.
I enjoyed the way Young handled the psychic aspect of the story though it could’ve done without the inherited aspect. Grandma kinda sorta having powers really didn’t add anything to the story for me. It seems this book is part of a trilogy so hopefully Charlie will be a bit less uppity in her New Englander elitism in the next book.
Rumor has it that this is the first in a series. I do not understand this. It makes for a perfect standalone novel. In fact, this is a great story – spooky, intense, and heartbreaking. Better yet, it kept me guessing until the end. I enjoyed every minute of it. Will I read future stories, whatever they are? That remains to be seen.
A very well written, readable mystery. I loved this book. Read the entire thing in one sitting because I couldn't bear to put it down without finding out what really happened to Gabriel Deveau and Sean Lauchlin those thirty years ago. Perfect for fans of Mary Kubica's The Good Girl.
Oh so good. Page turning! Murder, mystery, romance it has it all. Then to find out the author is doing a series on this book is beyond amazing, I just wish I didn't have to wait a year for the next one!
4.5 stars! I loved reading this book; I was totally sucked in and intrigued by the mystery, and even the supernatural elements didn't bother me. (I'm usually not much for supernatural stories.) I considered dropping this book down to four stars because I thought the big "mystery" was pretty obvious and I was practically shaking the book trying to get Charlie to PAY ATTENTION to the clues, but there was enough else going on that even though I knew what was going to happen, I still couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Also, as Gabrielle Zevin once wrote: "Is a twist that you can't predict symptomatic of bad construction?" I think the fact that I would still recommend this book despite its predictability speaks to how good it is! I will definitely be reading the next novel Hester Young publishes. :)
I'll tentatively give it 4.5 and round it up to 5...
I loved this book. Maybe there are issues with it, maybe there are people who'd find it predictable, but it was the right book for me at the right time.
I loved this book. Maybe there are issues with it, maybe there are people who'd find it predictable, but it was the right book for me at the right time.