Sara J. Henry

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. But I didn’t, and I saw something fall from the rear deck of the opposite ferry: a small, wide-eyed human face, in one tiny frozen moment, as it plummeted toward the water.”

When she sees what looks like a child tumbling from a ferry into frigid Lake Champlain, Troy Chance dives in without thinking. When she gets the child to shore she discovers that his name is Paul, he speaks only French—and no one show more seems to be looking for him.

Her determination to protect Paul pulls Troy from her quiet life in a small Adirondack town into an unfamiliar world of wealth and privilege in Canada and then in Vermont. Her attachment to him—and the danger she faces when she tries to unravel the mystery of his abandonment—force her to evaluate everything she thought true about herself.

Sara J. Henry's riveting, award-winning debut will keep readers engrossed right up to its shattering conclusion.

My Review: This book is not oversold by its jacket copy. I was indeed riveted. The melodramatic ending wasn't a surprise, but it was *intensely* satisfying. Shattering, well...ya know, in a very basic sense, yes. I cannot in any part of me comprehend the actions of the perp in this story. I was so outraged and so lividly furiously angry at the perp for doing what was done, that the Big Reveal Moment (while not a surprise) had me hopping from foot to foot with a desire to hurt and kill and then resurrect and hurt and kill the perp some more.

Any more would be spoilering.

Sara Henry did a fine job making the book an intense emotional experience. That is a LOT to say of a debut novelist. But she also made me feel about six hundred years old...in a late chapter, she mentions "the OLD TV show Sliders and goes on to explain the premise of the "old" show.

Old. The Nineties are old? They were yester-goddam-day! OLD is when my late mother was young! The Twenties! That's OLD.

I'm gonna go rock in my chair and eat Farina for supper now.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

1. Supposing you'd just rescued a child from drowning, would you:
a) take the kid home to live with you? or,
b) take the child to the nearest police station or hospital? or,
c) call 911?

2. If that child told you he had been kidnapped, would you:
a) suspect the father because you'd read a newspaper article once about a guy who faked his child's kidnapping to get rid of him? or,
b) call the police?

3. If you suspected someone of kidnapping and murder, would you:
a) go visit them so you can intuit show more whether or not they might be dangerous? or,
b) call the police already?

3. If you were a wealthy business man whose son had been kidnapped, but was now returned to you, although the kidnappers were still free and knew your son might be able to identify them, would you:
a) wait a week after his return, then head to Home Depot for some new window latches? or,
b) have already had an expensive security system professionally installed?

4. If you made out with a guy, and there were *ahem* indications that he really got into it, when that same guy suddenly kissed you passionately a few days later would you:
a) be surprised because you thought he had liked you like a sister? or,
b) not be surprised at all, really?

5. If you were the owner of a successful marketing business generating millions of dollars, would you:
a) need help with basic computer tasks? or,
b) be proficient at the systems you needed to run your company and have a computer guy on the payroll for the other stuff?

6. If the father of the kidnapped child asked you to come live with them in their home in another city for a while would you:
a) move right on in immediately?
b) consider visiting when work is less busy and your own obligations allow? or
c) think that is more than a little odd and decline politely?

7. If you discovered emails from a guy's murdered wife in on her computer that might shed light on her final movements, would you:
a) email the people who had written her since her disappearance pretending to be her? or,
b) let the husband know about them, especially since you and he are sometimes making out, even though it always kinda surprises you?
c) seriously, the police exist for a reason!

If you answered a) to the above questions, congratulations! You're the author of this book! In this book, Troy, the main character rescues a six-year-old she sees thrown from a ferry as it moves past the ferry she's on. She jumps in and rescues him, swimming back to shore. Then she decides that it might be his parents who threw him off of the ferry. Later, after he's moved in to her house, he tells her he was kidnapped. And then a thriller of sorts ensues, driven mainly by the utter, utter stupidity of the main character and unlikely plot twists that were nonetheless entirely predictable. All secondary characters exist only to help Troy out when she needs it, at which point they no longer need to be bothered with. Also, there's lots of stating the obvious, demonstrating areas the author researched and enough padding to make a decent quilt. Avoid this one. show less

Troy Chance, a free-lance reporter, is present for another story when a body is discovered frozen in a pond. It turns out to b that of Tobin Winslow, the boyfriend of one of her roommates. She hadn't particularly liked Tobin but, when she is assigned to write about his life, she is determined to be fair and honest. What she discovers is a lot of family secrets and soon she is wrapped up, not only in the mystery of Tobin's death but another from years before. She also finds her opinions about show more Tobin and many of her friends changing as she delves deeper into his history.

This is the first Sara Henry novel I have read and I didn't realize it was the second in a series. There are numerous references to her first book, Learning to Swim. I didn't find this spoiled my enjoyment of A Cold and Lonely Place but reading the second book definitely made me want to read the first because I really enjoyed this novel.

As much a character study as a mystery, the book takes you beyond the usual mystery novel. Henry has created characters who are much more than just props for a tale of murder and mayhem - they have background, foibles, and secrets - and, because of this, we care about them as much as we care about the solution to the mystery.

She also does a great job of evoking place. The story takes place in the Adirondacks, a place I really know nothing about. After reading Henry's descriptions of it, though, I came away with a strong impression of a place which may be very, very cold in winter but where the inhabitants have learned to adapt and celebrate their winters - a perfect setting for this story about Tobin's death in a frozen pond and Troy's story celebrating his life. This novel definitely has layers.

A Cold and Lonely Place is that rare mystery novel in which the characters are as important as the plot. Most such stories make me curious to know what happened; this book made me care about who it happened to. show less

I have no idea why this book has so many good reviews. It thoroughly annoyed me. I will say that I "read" it as an audio book, so maybe part of my annoyance is with the narrator (who sounds way too stuffy and grandmotherly than the character is). But, beyond that, the writing itself was like nails on a chalkboard to me. Just atrocious. There are so many inane digressions. You should play a drinking game of taking a shot every time she detours to describe the food she's eating. Seriously, you show more will be drunk in 10 minutes. Do I really need to know that the character puts chunky peanut butter in her oatmeal? Do I need to hear about the "drippings" (gag) of her bean burger? JUST GET ON WITH IT. Even if you took out the unnecessary descriptions (seriously, the book would be 25 pages shorter without the food stuff alone), the story drags out SO SLOWLY. Again, maybe the narration was just too slow for me on the audio version, but I don't think that's solely to blame. I was literally rolling my eyes as I listened, thinking, "GET TO THE POINT." It didn't help that I had the "mystery" figured out about halfway through. I found the main character extremely unbelievable. It's all like a Twilight Zone episode. I would have respected this more if it turned out to actually BE a Twilight Zone episode. As it is, it's a dull, terribly unlikely and unexciting plot with some sappy, cliched romance thrown in. The main character says, describing the lame "twist" at the end, "This is like a scene from a bad detective novel." Um, yes, EXACTLY. I couldn't get into this at all. It was truly painful. show less