I think what I love most about this book was its casual magic. The fantastic beasts, human and otherwise, populating this novel are always believable. You can't help but be dragged into Willie Upton's world with its ghosts and family secrets. ( )

I enjoyed this book, although I'm not sure if everyone would like it. It is based around a girl who comes back to her small town and learns that some things she thought to be true were not. It was a little hard to start, but if you keep reading it does become very interesting. I also thought some of the chapters about her ancestors and the history of the town were very slow and I couldn't always follow who they were talking about and how they were related to the main character. I was also hoping for more tie ins with the monster, but he really only was talked about in the beginning and the end. Although some parts were hard to get through when I finished the book I felt very satisfied and had nothing but good thoughts about it. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is up for a very different kind of book and willing to take the slow paced chapters with the fast paced ones. ( )

Summary: Willie Upton, a graduate student in archaeology, returns home to Templeton, New York for the summer. Templeton should be welcoming - it's a small town, and Willie is the last descendant of the town's founder - but it's not quite the homecoming that she'd imagined, for Willie is pregnant with her (married) advisor's child. Neither is the town quite the same: on the day she returns home, the corpse of a giant monster surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, simultaneously throwing the town into an uproar and casting a strange pall over the inhabitants. To make matters worse, Willie's mother Vi lets slip that Willie's father is not an anonymous San Franciscan hippie, but is in fact someone from Templeton itself. Obsessed with figuring out her parentage while avoiding the truth about her current situation, Willie digs into her family tree, which is also the history of a town, and discovers more than one secret buried in time.

Review: The number one word I have seen connected with this book is "ambitious", and it's certainly apt. Groff tries to do a *lot* with this book - multiple voices, multiple periods of history, epistolary portions, sprawling family trees, sprinkles of magical realism, incorporation of James Fenimore Cooper's famous characters as real people, a coming-of-age story, and more. Ambitious, no doubt, particularly for a first novel... but the thing is, she pulls most of it off. I think she particularly did a nice job with creating distinct, believable voices for each chapter, regardless of the narrating character's sex, age, or historical milieu. I did have a little bit of a problem as to how all of the pieces fit together into the novel - some are documents that Willie finds during the course of her research, but many are not, and the context in which illiterate characters are speaking to us as a reader is never clear. I almost would have preferred that *none* of the historical sections had been presented as actual documents (and they are, too, often with photos, family trees, or page edges drawn around the words), rather than half in context and half without.

I've never read any James Fenimore Cooper, so I have no idea how well those elements are worked in, but Templeton as a thinly-veiled Cooperstown is excellently drawn. At first I was a little confused as to why Groff didn't just call it Cooperstown and be done with it, the veil is so thin, but as I read I realized by tweaking it just a little out of reality, she can play with the history, play with the people who inhabit it, and add in lake monsters and firestarters and all sorts of things without offending anyone. Groff's writing style (when she's not writing "in voice") is fluid, fancy, and easily readable, of the sort that skirts along the border of lyrical without ever quite tipping over into pretentious, and it excellently sets the mood for the rest of the story.

Overall, even though all of the pieces didn't fit together quite as solidly as I would have hoped, each of the pieces in and of itself was well-done. I found it very easy to get absorbed in this book, and thoroughly enjoyable throughout. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for what Groff produces in the future. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I think people who normally read either literary fiction or historical fiction will enjoy this book, particularly folks for whom large family trees are like literary candy. However, while I didn't find the magical realism elements to be out of place or distracting, if the phrase "lake monster" sends you screaming for the hills, then maybe you're best suited looking elsewhere. ( )

I enjoyed reading the book, but several things bothered me. I didn't always read all the past history subplots. The book also refers heavily on James Fenmore Cooper, but changes many details. And the end is tied up too neatly for my taste. ( )

A little tough to keep the family trees straight, but really rewarding at the end. Very clever and interesting story. ( )