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Customer Review
Reviewed in Canada đ¨đŚ on March 31, 2020
Welcome to Barren Springs. Iâve rarely come across a more appropriately named setting & once youâve spent some time here, I think youâll agree.
Our MC & narrator is Eve Taggart. She & brother Cal somehow survived a childhood of poverty, fear & neglect courtesy of their drug dealing mother. Now Cal is a cop & Eve is a single mom, struggling to make ends meet on a waitressâ salary. Twelve year old Junie is the one good thing in Eveâs life & sheâs determined to be the mother she never had.
So itâs no surprise that her daughterâs murder marks the beginning of Eveâs descent into darkness. After the bodies of Junie & best friend Izzy are found in a local park, it falls on Cal to break the news to Eve. Meanwhile, his boss Sheriff Land heads to the more genteel side of town to inform Jenny & Zach, Izzyâs wealthy parents. Thereâs bad blood between Eve & Land & when you learn of their shared history, youâll understand why Eve decides she must search for the killer herself.
Oh man, prepare yourselfâŚ..this one is going to put you through the wringer. On one level, you have a devastated motherâs search for her daughterâs killer. But along the way, the author includes scenes that have you pondering so much more. Casual racism, domestic abuse, the social chasm between poverty & wealth & how we (unconsciously?) judge the parents of missing/murdered children. These are some of the themes that run through the background & shape the course of Eveâs investigation.
The setting effectively sets the tone for whatâs to come. Barren Springs is a place that reeks of hopelessness & despair. Opportunity has bypassed it completely & virtually every character is just trying to survive. If it had a town square, a statue of Dante would not be out of place. As with many insular communities, everybody know your business. So the odds of someone rising above their predetermined place in the pecking order is essentially nil.
With this in mind, we follow Eve as she begins digging into events surrounding the death of the 2 girls. Unfortunately, it brings her into contact with her toxic mother & Junieâs estranged father. Eve cut them from her life in an effort to rise above her birthright but as she swings from crippling grief to blind rage, the temptation to return to her roots only grows stronger. With Junie gone, her only reason to keep breathing is revenge.
Once again, this author has created a cast of characters that evoke every emotion. Eveâs mother is a feral woman who survives on cigarettes & hate. Sheriff Land makes your skin crawl every time he steps on the page & youâll begin to consider ways of wiping the smarmy grin off his face (note to self: delete search history đ). Eve & Jenny seem polar opposites until events force them together & I really enjoyed the evolution of their relationship.
The story is relentlessly bleak so it seems wrong to say I âenjoyedâ it. Itâs grim, gritty & makes no attempt to gloss over the ugly sides of human nature. The ending left me drained & in need of a beverage while I processed what happened. But you can only become that immersed in a work of fiction if the author has the tools & ability to pull it off. Ms. Engel clearly does.
Our MC & narrator is Eve Taggart. She & brother Cal somehow survived a childhood of poverty, fear & neglect courtesy of their drug dealing mother. Now Cal is a cop & Eve is a single mom, struggling to make ends meet on a waitressâ salary. Twelve year old Junie is the one good thing in Eveâs life & sheâs determined to be the mother she never had.
So itâs no surprise that her daughterâs murder marks the beginning of Eveâs descent into darkness. After the bodies of Junie & best friend Izzy are found in a local park, it falls on Cal to break the news to Eve. Meanwhile, his boss Sheriff Land heads to the more genteel side of town to inform Jenny & Zach, Izzyâs wealthy parents. Thereâs bad blood between Eve & Land & when you learn of their shared history, youâll understand why Eve decides she must search for the killer herself.
Oh man, prepare yourselfâŚ..this one is going to put you through the wringer. On one level, you have a devastated motherâs search for her daughterâs killer. But along the way, the author includes scenes that have you pondering so much more. Casual racism, domestic abuse, the social chasm between poverty & wealth & how we (unconsciously?) judge the parents of missing/murdered children. These are some of the themes that run through the background & shape the course of Eveâs investigation.
The setting effectively sets the tone for whatâs to come. Barren Springs is a place that reeks of hopelessness & despair. Opportunity has bypassed it completely & virtually every character is just trying to survive. If it had a town square, a statue of Dante would not be out of place. As with many insular communities, everybody know your business. So the odds of someone rising above their predetermined place in the pecking order is essentially nil.
With this in mind, we follow Eve as she begins digging into events surrounding the death of the 2 girls. Unfortunately, it brings her into contact with her toxic mother & Junieâs estranged father. Eve cut them from her life in an effort to rise above her birthright but as she swings from crippling grief to blind rage, the temptation to return to her roots only grows stronger. With Junie gone, her only reason to keep breathing is revenge.
Once again, this author has created a cast of characters that evoke every emotion. Eveâs mother is a feral woman who survives on cigarettes & hate. Sheriff Land makes your skin crawl every time he steps on the page & youâll begin to consider ways of wiping the smarmy grin off his face (note to self: delete search history đ). Eve & Jenny seem polar opposites until events force them together & I really enjoyed the evolution of their relationship.
The story is relentlessly bleak so it seems wrong to say I âenjoyedâ it. Itâs grim, gritty & makes no attempt to gloss over the ugly sides of human nature. The ending left me drained & in need of a beverage while I processed what happened. But you can only become that immersed in a work of fiction if the author has the tools & ability to pull it off. Ms. Engel clearly does.
