I was very impressed with this debut southern gothic/paranormal mystery. It's set in Louisiana, which is the very best place in the whole of the USA for gothic aura. Those bayous can be darned spooky! There is a great cast of characters, rich detail, excellent pacing, and a twist that caught me completely off guard.

The rich Deveau family owns a big ol' mansion in the bayous, called Evangeline. The Deveaus suffered a tragedy 30 years ago when their small son, Gabriel, disappeared without a trace. Charlotte "Charlie" Cates is a young, recently bereaved mother from Connecticut; after her son died she began having strange "dreams" or visions of children in trouble. She comes to Evangeline to write about Gabriel's disappearance, and she has it in her mind that maybe her dreams can help her figure out what happened to him. Mama Deveau is on her deathbed and the remaining Deveau children are all rather unpleasant, greedy, and have lots of other "issues," and Charlie immediately falls right in the middle of all the nasty family secrets and squabbles. Oh, and there's a hunky Texan working at Evangeline...I won't say any more about him. ;-) There you have it, all the ingredients for a delicious gothic mystery!

I enjoyed the book so much that I went to the author's Goodreads page, something I don't usually do. I learned this is the first of a planned "Charlie Cates" trilogy. Book 2, [b:The Shimmering Road|28248317|The Shimmering Road|Hester Young|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479156265s/28248317.jpg|48284078], was released in February of this year. Since Ms. Young's first book was so wonderful, the second went immediately on my to-read shelf.

Read it and enjoy!

Great pacing and even many of the minor characters had defining features/desires that made them compelling.

This was okay. Southern Gothics are a favorite of mine, so I loved the setting, atmosphere and mystery, but then it turned into a cheesy romance.

The main character irritated the hell out of me. She was self-absorbed and child-crazy. She gets with a guy one night and it turns into true love. *vom*

And then there was something about the writing that I HATED. I kept thinking it was badly written, but then I realized maybe it just wasn’t my style. Or both. It kind of had a romance-type feel to it.

Definitely no masterpiece, but I didn’t see the ending coming, even though there were tons of clues, so that was fun.

Entertaining but not enthralling.

Twists and turns, an emotional roller coaster of a story. The grief was palpable, as was the terror. I was mesmerized by this horror/mystery/romance/religious/paranormal story!

Good old Southern Gothic. I liked the mix of mystery, crime, and supernatural. One plot twist I saw coming; the other took me by surprise. I liked Charlotte's character although wondered how she managed to be brought in on police investigations as a New Yorker visiting Louisiana. Suitable rambling and spooky antebellum house, swamp, and gators. The romance between Charlotte and Noah - I didn't feel worked, but on the whole, I really liked the book, except for the ending, which was a bit too predictable and schmaltzy for me. When Charlotte had her visions or dreams, I thought the author did a great job with that. This is book #1 of a trilogy, which I'll certainly read.

http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2015/10/2015-book-239.html

This is one of those books that I only kept reading to see if I was right about the mystery. I was. There is just WAY too much going on here. The protagonist is a woman whose young son recently died of a brain aneurysm, and now she's been assigned a job to go to Louisiana and write a book about a long-unsolved cold case involving a missing little boy from a prominent/wealthy family. Also, she is now having visions of dead children (including the missing boy). Also, there is a love interest whose family may be tied to the cold case. ALSO, every Southern character is a horrible stereotype; seriously, it's almost offensive. The way she writes their speech! Except for the super rich characters, who are stereotypes in a different way. There is some okay stuff here on grieving, and some interesting closeted characters, but this book was SO CRAZY and so all-over-the-place that I couldn't really take it seriously. B-.

Lord, this woman is a terrible detective and for a clairvoyant, she is dense as hell. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the trip to the bayou and the mystery as it unfolded but I didn’t want to shake her more than a few times. I’ll also admit to getting a little misty-eyed here or there. I don’t know that I’ll continue the series or not.

First southern thriller I have ever read. This book captivated me from the very beginning. As I was reading I was able to see the characters and the settings. I would have never guessed how the book would end, this book kept me reading for hours and I never once got board.

This book sounded very intriguing to me but was ultimately a rather large disappointment. The characters are all incredibly stereotypical— almost to the point of being offensive. The main character is a self-involved woman in her late 30’s who seems to know very little of the world around her and jumps to conclusions about anyone and everyone she meets. These conclusions are generally very negative and later on when she is proven to have been wrong she always acts surprised. This is a theme throughout the story that really started to wear on me in the end.

She is also incredibly oblivious and places her narrow world view on events and experiences until she twists them in her mind and they end up far from the truth. I spent half the novel trying to read between the lines of her untrustworthy narration.

The mystery is entertaining enough with a few good twists although I felt the conclusion was rather obvious. As a result, the inability of the main characters to solve the mystery made the story feel long and drawn out to me. The love story and the background of the main character made the book feel very cluttered. I think it could have done without many of the scenes that weren’t a part of solving the main mystery. The ending scenes especially annoyed me. Near the end of the book the main character who is the narrator starts spelling things out in a manner I would expect in a children’s book.

Overall a huge disappointment for me. This book was compared to Gillian Flynn and other popular mystery thrillers and I disagree with that comparison whole-heartedly. If you want the lifetime movie version (to quote another reviewer) of those great novels then this book is for you.

Final note: If you were in the south, you likely did not go to a Carl’s Junior! You went to Hardee’s. A quick google search told me there are 3 Carl’s Junior in Louisiana and they are all in Shreveport. Little details like that seem important to me to get right.