Long Bright River by Liz Moore – 496 pages
Finished copy from Riverhead Books in exchange for an honest review
Book Blurb:
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Long Bright River was a stunning novel that proved once again, that Liz Moore is at the top of her game. This book has it all: an original storyline, a fine-tuned character study and perfect pacing. It also happens to be the third book I’ve read by this author and each one has not only been terrific, but completely also different from one another. In other words, this author will not be put into a box. Heft, the first book I read of Moore’s, landed on my best of 2012 and her next book, The Unseen World also made my Best of 2017 list; there seems to be a pattern here – likely due to the expressive and compelling writing.
Sister relationships, even the best of them, are always peppered with some type of angst. For Mickey and Kasey, co-dependent through their youth, are no different. Things get really dicey when one becomes a drug addict and one becomes a cop in the same town. They walk the same streets, Mickey trying to save her sister, yet Kacey wants no part of being saved. This is the novel at its most inner core. What surrounds it is what brings the story to life.
The opioid crisis, abuse, police corruption, friendship, adoption, race, serial murders, trust, sisterhood, parenting, crime-solving, dysfunctional families and love are the yarns that piece this story together. I’m sure every reader will have a different take-away from this novel. Many will be most concerned about the “whodunnit” aspect of the murders, while others will focus more on the possible rebuilding of the sisters’ relationship. Or, like me, all of it. Moore worked in many unsuspecting twists that truly surprised me.
In reviewing this book, it has come to me that all of Moore’s books contain convincing and evocative relationships. In this novel alone, relationships are explored between grandparent and grandchild, teacher and student, police officer to police officer, ex to ex, sister to sister, neighbor to neighbor, mother to child and cop to suspect. Each had tinges of pride, tension, spite, lust, inadequacy, suspicion, joy, fulfillment, worthlessness, victimization, sensitivity and hope.
This book was selected as the Good Morning America book club pick and in the brand new column Group Text, (part in the NYT Book Review) as their book club selection. This book is worthy of all the hype it’s receiving. I highly recommend!
Quotes I liked:
People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed souls.”
“But if I was self-conscious about my appearance, I was proud of my intelligence, which I thought of, in secret, as something that rested quietly inside me, a sleeping dragon guarding a store of wealth that no, not even Gee, could take away. A weapon I would one deploy to save us both: myself and my sister.”
“I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was. I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”
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