Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Hardcover, 279 pages

Published March 7th 2017 by Crown

ISBN

1101906669 (ISBN13: 9781101906668)

Edition Language

English

After her mother’s suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother’s mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran fast and far away.

Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.

As it weaves between Lane’s first Roanoke summer and her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

My thoughts…

5 I kind of feel bad for liking it so much stars!!

I’m not even sure where to start with this review.. I may be one of the last people who hasn’t read this book yet.  Maybe I should start off with the trigger warnings, for bad, bad things.  I can’t go into detail but if you can be easily triggered by anything disturbing this may not be the book for you.  I really enjoyed Amy Engels previous YA book duology The Book of Ivy and the Revolution of Ivy.  I was super hesitant to go into this because I knew it was going to be nothing like the YA books and usually when an author steps out of my favorite genre they are writing it never ends well.  Boy have I never been happier to be proved wrong.  Amy Engel knocked it out of the park with this novel.  I believe with this story she has just become an auto-buy author for me.

This story mainly follows Lane and her trip back to the Roanoke household.  She is only coming back for one reason, to find her cousin. This house is not a home no matter what anyone says.  The uniqueness to this house and its many layers, just as this family has so many layers.  The ick factor is very thick in this book, you can tell from the very beginning that something is not right in the Roanoke household.  You learn early in the book what exactly is going on, however as the book progresses you don’t quite realize how deep the ick goes.  (yes ick is a technical term)  I loved following Lane throughout this whole book and her transformation.  She grew throughout the whole traumatic book… I cannot even fathom how hard it was for her to step back into that house/neighborhood.

This author never ceases to amaze me with her vivid imagination.  (I really hope most of this was imagination)  The thought process of putting together this book with the Roanoke Girls … how did she do that?  I would love to know was it a post it board?  At the end I just was speechless… I couldn’t believe how it all unwound. The writing was just seamless, once I picked the book up I didn’t want to put it down.  I just needed to know where was Allegra??  What happened in this house?  What made the Roanoke Girls so special?

I do believe this book is not for everyone.  Some people are not going to like this book because it goes in some rather hard directions.  It also has trigger warnings for basically anything you can come up with.

Thank you to Blogging for Books for a copy of this book in lieu of my honest review.

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