Reunion at Red Paint Bay

This has a lot going for it. There's the small town, coastal Maine setting, there are really believable characters, there's a mystery that sneaks in little by little, until the plot explodes in the final pages of the book in a finish that leaves the reader totally drained of emotion.

Sam Howe, who left Red Paint Bay to go to the big city to work in journalism, returns to his hometown and buys the weekly newspaper. There is seldom anything exciting to report about, but his family life is solid, the town is a picturesque study in "life the way it should be," and Sam finds himself looking forward to the upcoming high school reunion.

Then he hires a recently released convicted felon to work at the paper. When his social worker/therapist wife show more discovers the new hire was convicted of rape, she makes her displeasure known. At about the same time, Sam begins receiving anonymous post-cards with disturbing and often unfathomable messages. As the story progresses and the suspense builds, the reader is led along a psychological journey of terror from an unknown stalker who seems to know a dark secret about Sam's past.

The story resolution is quite wrenching. To say more would be to spoil a great read where a dark mystery is there at the edges and only blossoms into full bloom at the end. All along, the reader knows something more is going to happen, that something is missing, and must keep reading until the sudden, unexpected ending.

It's a great tale of moral consequences, ethical dilemmas, differing perspectives, secrets, guilt and absolution. The newspaper may in fact have a very newsworthy headline next edition. show less

a most excellent 5 star read! review to come...:)
I had no idea what to expect with this book and I was pleasantly surprised!
what a tangled web we weave when at first we do deceive…. I have a friend who actually went through something quite like this, so it did hit home and bring back some uncomfortable memories.
This is not a mystery or thriller as such but more psychological, slowly creeping into your head…Simon Howe is just your average happily married man until one day he receives a postcard in the mail and his once simple, quiet life starts to slowly spin out of control.
His son is being stalked…or is he? Someone is lurking outside their home and his wife is getting suspicious. Everyone in the little town of Red Paint Bay is show more suspect. Can an incident that happened back in high school come back and destroy your life one postcard at a time?
This book was great, hard to put down and not your average mystery. I never knew what was going on and I like that about a book. show less

This book took a little while to grow on me, but by the end, I was quite taken with it. It examines how an incident from graduation night, 25 years before, comes back to haunt Simon Howe, a newspaper owner in the small town in Maine he grew up in. Overall, it was worth a read. I can picture this book very easily as a movie---it has that kind of plot, for better or worse, and here, mostly for better.

Simon Howe grew up in Red Paint, Maine. Although he left for school and then a job with a newspaper, he found himself going back to Red Paint when his parents health declined. Simon ended up staying. He bought the old weekly newspaper and along with his therapist wife Amy and young son Davey, felt that life was good. And life was good. Red Paint was a friendly town, he knew many of the people there, had gone to school and grown up with them, in fact. It was a good place to raise a family. He led a fairly quiet and stress free life. Then, the first postcard arrived. It mentioned a funeral, but it meant nothing to Simon, who just put it aside and went on with his life.

A second and third postcard eventually arrived, and a suggestion of show more meeting with the sender seemed like a good idea. Simon was, after all a reporter at heart, and this was the way to solve the mystery of the postcards. That is when things began to start falling apart. There was a scare involving his son, whose behavior was becoming alarming in addition to the postcard mystery. A new and unusual patient showed up for an appointment, at Amy's office. A patient that showed up for appointment after appointment and whose behavior seemed odd even to someone who dealt with people and their issues every day. Then one day, things got worse. Much worse.

Who would have believed that a long ago moment in time would cause so much trouble in a carefully ordered life in the present. Certainly not Simon and his happy little family. But a single moment can matter more than he would ever have believed. The paper would come out again on Thursday, and for the first time in a long time, something big would be found on the front page. show less

Can you look over your life and safely say that you have never harmed a soul? Never once caused ill fate to someone, even if indirectly? If you started receiving cryptic postcards claiming pay back for a past wrongdoing would your conscience be clear?

To many Simon Howe has a perfect life, but when postcards start coming and the danger increases he must re-examine his past for what he could have done wrong before vengeance catches up with him.

Here is a link to my full Read to You Review from my website www.redbookreviews.com - I hope you enjoy.

https://soundcloud.com/red-book-reviews/red-book-reviews-reunion-at

Loved the small town atmosphere, the idea of a man returning home to buy his town's failing newspaper. Yet something with this novel just did not connect for me. The pace was very slow, the suspense with the editor and his wife being sent strange postcards from a anonymous source, could have been better. It was just okay.

For the most part, I did enjoy this book. I wasn't satisfied with the ending. It would have been nice to find out what happened after the town read the newspaper story and what happened with the person writing the postcards. But otherwise, I found it very easy to read and related to the characters in the story.