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The Roanoke Girls: A Novel

The Roanoke Girls: A Novel - Amy Engel Not for the faint of heart.

Roanoke is a house with a dark, dark secret, and the Roanoke girls have a way of getting out, whether by leaving or dying.

I gotta say, I went into this expecting, as some point, a feel good (ish) story of a girl coming back home. And of course, being from Kansas I was excited to think I would be able to relate, at least in some small part, to the characters.

And really, there were things about life in Osage Falls that I picked out and thought, "Yep, I can see that." But thank goodness there was very little else I could relate to. The Roanoke's dark family secret was darker than I expected, producing a family of broken girls with dark secrets. Secrets many of them died to get away from.

If I had known ahead of time just exactly how brutal this book would turn out to be, I might have shied away. But in the end I'm glad I didn't. It was completely unpleasant and cringe worthy for the most part, with only hints of redeeming shining through in rare places. But still, the story sucked me in and kept me reading through to the end. The scenery and characters were vivid, if unlikable to downright despicable.

*A copy of this book was provided by the publisher/netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

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