Rebecca Barrow

A very apt title here. Harlow was continually uprooted by her mother, with only a vague explanation that 'someone' was after them. Everything came to a head the night they were hit by a semi and Mom died, but not before she gave Harlow a key and a cryptic message. The key led her to a safe deposit box with lots of cash and information about a house in a distant town.
Ignoring her late mother's warning not to go there, she buys a car and makes the trip. What she finds is an eerie place deep in the woods that looks abandoned, but has electricity and water. If it's been abandoned and unlived in for years, who's been paying the bills? Her gradual understanding of her mom's paranoia, what happened at the house many years ago, and who she really is are what follows in alternating vignettes. Her mom had sisters and a mother that if not evil, was twisted. Harlow's unraveling of all that is at times scary, sometimes insightful, and has one heck of a twist at the end.… (more)

Certainly an unusual story! The ambience of wealth, luxury, privilege and youth is disconcertingly hedonistic. The entitled characters seem to lack moral values and human kindness. I didn't find the idea of the island being idyllic very convincing but the pervasive threat came across well.

The mysteries, some of them, are satisfyingly resolved by the end and there are the requisite false directions, lies and flawed understanding. The lead character tells her own story throughout and this stability of perspective is one of the strengths of Rebecca Barrow's novel. For Luca this is a coming of age story as she meets her first love and accepts it as a dimension further than friendship. This is delicately and touchingly described. As is Luca's gritty determination to get to the bottom of her sister's story, however shocking it may turn out to be.… (more)