Book Blurb:
1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a practice ball from her tee with a wooden club. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, travels 150 miles per hour for fifteen yards and slams, with sickening force, into the forehead of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, causing a traumatic rupture in the frontal lobe of his brain. Kenny brings his right hand to his forehead, then topples to his side. He is dead before the ambulance even arrives.
In the wake of this terrible accident—and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident—Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man forty years her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when Henry Fallows, the golf pro, looks more closely at the torn net, when the detective investigating the case recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once promising young woman.
My Review: 4.25 stars
The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian was a total winner for me. It offered a great plot, a good mystery and a highly unlikeable main character. Bohjalian books are often hit or miss for me, yet this one, and his last, The Jackal’s Mistress were winners for me.
I sped through this one as I was completely invested in these characters. Mira was such an unlikeable person, yet I was still rooting for her because she never meant to kill her friend, who was a new caddy. She made poor decisions over and over again and I just wanted to slap her but also hug away her circumstances.
Having this book set in the early 70s was so good. It took place before the “me too” era and it led Mira into some sticky situations as she loved sleeping with married men. She also took all types of drugs on the regular which was never really questioned. I thought the trial was well written and the ending had a great conclusion. This one read really quickly and kept me highly entertained.
Quotes I liked:
How often do you run into people from one part of your life in another, momentarily not recognizing them?”
Shop on Amazon Here!
The Witch (Deluxe Edition)
AUD 30.24
