This post is from a series where I review products during the week
I was looking for a good mystery. A page-turning, who-done-it and I thought this cover was pretty interesting. Here’s a tip for authors:
Don’t let your novel PEAK with the cover.
Descent: A Novel –The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, who are taking a family vacation before their daughter leaves for college. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic.
Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion.
Let me begin by saying I was very excited to read this book. It started out very well. It felt like stepping into a conversation that was already going, but one that wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening.
Cue the dramatic event a few chapters in and then you follow a family as it tries to pick up the pieces. Mom goes nuts. Dad continues a search for the daughter long after authorities have given up hope. Younger brother goes AWOL. Lifetime movie comparisons abound.
The main problem I had with this book was that the dialogue was like pulling teeth. For some reason that I’m sure has a concrete literary concept behind it, as the author is an actual creative writing professor, all the characters act like they’re deaf.
I wish I was kidding. Imagine pages of this:
“What do you think we should do?”
“What?”
“I said, what do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one calling the shots. What do you think we should do?”
“Well if I knew I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?”
“What?”
To be clear, this is not an excerpt from the book, but it is EXACTLY how I felt when I was reading some of the dialogue. Maybe it was a device to emphasize how distracted the characters were in the midst of everything or to make the conversations feel more natural. For me it just didn’t work.
Then the book seems to have a problem with the story it’s trying to tell. We saw the characters as a family and we saw their individual stories of heartache and pain. Then [spoiler alert] we saw Caitlin. It was like the book couldn’t decide if it was going to be an action story of a heroine getting herself to safety or following the lives of a family in the aftermath of tragedy. Instead it tried to be both and neither one came away feeling very strong.
Now all that being said, this guy can write. The language and descriptions he gave are honestly reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy. Like seriously, that good. The story kept my attention even when the plot seemed to get bogged down in tangent adventures that had no bearing on the story. The unraveling of the mystery of Caitlin’s disappearance was discovered in such a way that it hurt to think this was the best trail the author took to get us to the climax. Think of solving a crime like Scooby-Doo, not Sherlock Holmes.
To the author’s credit he was trying to approach a beaten-like-a-dead-horse category of child-goes-missing, family-falls-apart genre and was able to do something unique.
It’s worth a read, especially if you can ever find it for under $5. Which is what I would have liked to have paid after I read it.
If you enjoyed this review you would check out:
Thinking Out Loud | gtylermills 