"Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die."
Wow, that's what I call a novel that leaves you shocked! Bought on an impulse at the airport, I could not put it down. It is not really a thriller, it is more a noir/twisted family saga in my opinion.
There is this family, the Roanoke, a patriarch and all his girls, sisters, daughters and granddaughters.
They are all very beautiful and they are all destined to the same future, they either escape from the Roanoke property or they die young. But why?
Lane arrives at her grandparents house after her mother commits suicide, Lane is a tough, no nonsense teenager, lacking love. She finds herself from NY city to the Kansas countryside, she finds a cousin - Allegra - who quickly becomes her inseparable companion for the summer, she finds a warm affection from her granddad and she finds passion in Cooper who she loves and hurts with the same fierce.
But she also finds family secrets' she cannot cope with so she has to escape. But she is then forced to come back when Allegra disappears and she goes back to Roanoke to find her and to sort the family out once for all.
It is such a dark story, disturbing yet so gripping; I loved Lane, loved her determination, her toughness, her weaknesses. And I loved Cooper as well, a tough kid with a big heart who reinvent himself not to succumb to the destiny of sufferance he seems predestined to.
It is a novel of twisted love, a novel of the power adults can have on kids and the twisted power love can have on some people.
A shocking must read, very original in its plot.
"You can't outrun what's inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try and turn it into something better. I may not know exactly where I'm headed, but this time I'm choosing my own destiny.”
Overall rating: 8 Plot: 9 Writing style: 9 Cover: 6
Title: The Roanoke girls
Author: Amy Engel
Publisher: Hodder
Pages: 288
Publication year: 2017
Plot:
The girls of the Roanoke family - beautiful, rich, mysterious - seem to have it all. But there's a dark truth about them that's never spoken.Lane is one of the lucky ones. When she was fifteen, over one long, hot summer at her grandparents' estate in rural Kansas, she found out what it really means to be a Roanoke girl. Lane ran, far and fast. Until eleven years later, when her cousin Allegra goes missing - and Lane has no choice but to go back.She is a Roanoke girl.Is she strong enough to escape a second time?
The Author:
Amy Engel is the author of THE BOOK OF IVY young adult series. A former criminal defense attorney, she lives in Missouri with her family. THE ROANOKE GIRLS (March 7, 2017), is her first novel for adults.
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