Keywords: Grief, foster care, found family, emotional manipulation

Genre: Women’s fiction

Length: short medium long

Country: USA

Synopsis from Goodreads

Jude Farraday is a happily married, stay-at-home mom who puts everyone’s needs above her own. Her twins, Mia and Zach, are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill enters their lives, no one is more supportive than Jude. A former foster child with a dark past, Lexi quickly becomes Mia’s best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. But senior year of high school brings unexpected dangers and one night, Jude’s worst fears are confirmed: there is an accident. In an instant, her idyllic life is shattered and her close-knit community is torn apart. People—and Jude—demand justice, and when the finger of blame is pointed, it lands solely on eighteen-year-old Lexi Baill. In a heartbeat, their love for each other will be shattered, the family broken. Lexi gives up everything that matters to her—the boy she loves, her place in the family, the best friend she ever had—while Jude loses even more.

When Lexi returns, older and wiser, she demands a reckoning. Long buried feelings will rise again, and Jude will finally have to face the woman she has become. She must decide whether to remain broken or try to forgive both Lexi…and herself.

Review

It has been over a month since my last post, and I owe you a small explanation. It was not for lack of reading. The books I picked up during this time were so underwhelming, and a few of them I simply did not like, that I never felt the urge to write about them. I am also not fond of writing about books I disliked, because I do not think such posts help anyone much, so I kind of went quiet. Today’s book is not one I loved either, but it is a small step up from the last few, and since I have only just reviewed another book by the same author, I decided to share it with you. It is Night Road by Kristin Hannah.

I knew nothing about it going in. I spotted it on my reading app and pressed play, so I experienced it as an audiobook, and from the very beginning I felt wary of the topic. The story seemed to be heading somewhere I did not want to go. Things changed along the way, however. I will try to keep this review spoiler-free, but I will have to hint at what happens, and I will do my best not to spoil the experience for you.

The plot

“I read somewhere that grief can be like breaking a bone. You have to set it right or it can ache forever. I pray that someday you’ll understand that and forgive me.”

We meet Lexi, a girl who has already lived a very hard life. She has no idea who her father is. Her mother was an addict who spent much of her time in prison and who always turned up at the worst possible moment, while Lexi herself drifted from one foster family to the next. Then an aunt she never knew she had appears and, more or less, announces that they are family and that Lexi is coming to live with her. From there, a new chapter begins. Lexi has a home and someone who cares for her, and she starts at a new school, anxious, as you would expect, where she befriends a girl named Mia and, little by little, Mia’s brother Zach. It is not a spoiler, since it is in the blurb, that Lexi and Zach fall in love, and the three of them become inseparable. Lexi almost becomes a member of her friend’s family, and everyone loves her.

Then a tragedy strikes and shocks everyone, and, to the author’s credit, it shocked me too. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I do not usually gravitate towards books marketed as women’s fiction, unless they deal with an Asian topic, which is my exception. When it comes to English-language literature, I find women’s fiction very predictable, and that is one of my main reasons for staying away. This time, though, I truly did not see it coming. It was night, I was in bed with the lights off and the book playing in the background, and as I listened I kept asking myself whether this was really happening. There is a kind of misdirection at work, and when the moment arrived I was properly shocked.

The way everything changes afterwards baffled me, but in an interesting way. I did not expect Mia’s mother to have such depth, or to become such a central figure, and I could understand her reaction to what happened. The father of Mia and Zach, Miles, was a very pleasant man, and while I am sure other readers found him difficult, or at least not very understanding, I sided with him throughout the story. As for Mia, Zach, and Lexi, they live through events that kept arriving one after another, shock after shock. So if you decide to read this book, know that something is coming, and it will be mind-boggling. I will stop here with the plot, because anything more would be a spoiler, and move on to the characters.

Characters

To be honest, the characters did not impress me. I may say that I liked Jude, Mia and Zach’s mom. She exhausted me, yet I almost appreciated her stubbornness in staying lost in what she was going through. In these stories we are so used to people struggling for a while and then getting back on their feet, announcing that life is wonderful again. That is not how it always goes. Often people truly get lost in sad events, and I appreciated that Jude did.

The others however, they felt like cardboard cut-outs. One or two traits max and that was it. Even when at some point one of them does something that’s going to hurt them later on and is truly out of character, instead of exploring it, it’s brushed off quite quickly and really not developed. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded it so much if it weren’t for the suffocating weight of the story and plotline.

Mia is bubbly, into Disney, singing, and dancing, yet we don’t really get to see it, do we? We’re told she’s the flower-power, girly teenager, emotional and sensitive, shy but then not shy at all. As I am speaking, I am reminded of that meme about people thinking you are awkward or shy until they get to know you, and that was pretty much Mia. I wanted more from and for her, because she had so much potential.

Zach, I honestly did not understand. We learn early on that he is good-looking, and that Mia fell out with a friend who only wanted to get close to her in order to get close to Zach, so he is clearly the heartthrob. But I never found a personality behind the looks: nothing charismatic, nothing interesting, nothing fun. I think that is kind of sad. I understand that they are teenagers, still searching, still in the making, preparing for college, but I am quite sure a person can have a personality at that age. He felt unexplored, as if the author were pressing the brakes on him very hard, even after the tragedy, when we watch him getting lost in a new role he has to play.

Lexi, the main character, was again the stereotypical poor girl from a bad family: abandoned, orphaned, and finally taken in by someone who loves her, she is friends with the richest kids, shops with their mother, rides in their car, sleeps over at their house, and becomes part of their family, while also pointing out the disconnect between her life and theirs. However what you must get from the get-go is that SHE IS A GOOD PERSON and she is selfless and she is always ready to sacrifice EVERYTHING for others. She is the exact opposite of the stereotypical villain. It didn’t click with me too much. Also, her resolve towards the end?? Very, very difficult to believe and to accept based on our characters.

The problem

I would almost say that the book was good enough, if it were not for one thing, and that, my dear friends, is emotional manipulation.

I cried so much reading this book.

I lay in bed with the tears flowing and could not stop them. Have you ever cried in spite of yourself, telling yourself that this is no reason to cry, that it is silly, and crying anyway? I hate it when a book sends me there. I have no problem crying over a book when the reason is good, when the situation and context have been built up over time and the emotion feels honestly earned.

Kristin Hannah, and I think this is exactly why she is so appreciated, knows how to make you cry. She knows how to write the characters, the lines, and the situations, and she knows what to point out to get you there.

You need to talk about her. You need to remember her and grieve.” “I do nothing but grieve.” “No. Your grief is an artery that’s been clamped off. If you don’t take that clamp off and let it flow, you’ll never heal.”

Hats off to her, because it is a skill. I do not have it, and I do not want it, but it is a skill nonetheless.

What I dislike is being emotionally consumed, exhausted, and out of tears, and then left with no substance. That is what happened here. It was a sad story, but it was nothing more. The characters did not make me yearn for them, or want to see where the story would go, or to learn more about them. Somewhere there was a huge disconnect. Just like I said before, the characters were too weak to bear the weight of the story.

To Conclude this Review

If you like crying, for whatever reason, then yes, go for this book. If you like Kristin Hannah in general, do read it as well. This is my third book by her, and my ranking is clear: I liked The Winter Garden best, even though I did not love it either, then The Nightingale, and Night Road comes last. If she is your go-to author, who am I to stop you?

But if you are like me, and you are not fond of emotional manipulation, or of a book whose only strength is how it makes your heart wrench, then I do not think this is the one for you.

If you want deep emotional books of the kind marketed as women’s fiction, I wholeheartedly recommend Lisa See, and any of her books. Her characters have personality and depth, and they are never stereotypes. They inhabit a real world, and when they interact with other characters, they leave parts of themselves in those characters’ worlds. They are human, and when you feel something while reading them, you know the feeling was earned. You worked for it, and it is neither cheap nor a gimmick.

I am sad that the review I am coming back with is not glowing, but I felt the need to write something because I did not want the blog to look abandoned. It is also not a terrible book. It is not a “don’t read this book.” I just do not necessarily advise it, but if you know that it is your thing, then by all means, dive in.