Bitter Sun
by Beth Lewis
Blurb:
"Stand by Me" meets "True Detective" in this stunningly written tale of the darkness at the heart of a small mid-Western town and the four kids who uncover it. In the heatwave summer of 1971, four kids find a body by a lake and set out to solve a murder, but they dig too deep and ask too many questions. Larson is a town reeling in the wake of the Vietnam draft, where the unrelenting heat ruins the harvest, and the people teeter on the edge of ruin. As tension and paranoia run rife, rumors become fact, violence becomes reflex. The unrest allows the dark elements of the close-knit farming community to rise and take control, and John, Jenny, Gloria, and Rudy are about to discover that sometimes secrets are best left uncovered.
My Reaction:
DNF one-third of the way through the book.
This book—or as much of it as I read, since I abandoned it after reading the first third—was such a disappointment! I enjoyed The Wolf Road, the author's first published novel, and had high hopes for this one. When I finally had a chance to read it, I jumped right in, but almost immediately it just wasn't working for me. I think I gave it a fair chance, but instead of improving it was starting to seriously annoy me. It's time to set this one aside and move on to something else. I'm still interested in trying another of this author's books, in the hopes that they're more like her first work and less like... this.
So, what didn't I love about this?
- Set in the United States, yet too often the characters use British words and turns of phrase that simply don't feel authentic to me. I could overlook this in a more compelling read, but on top of everything else, it was grating.
- I could have done without some of the tangents (commentary on the Vietnam War, for instance). Maybe they're supposed to set the scene and paint a picture of the time, but I didn't like them, and in a slow-paced book, the last thing we needed was more blah-blah-blah that didn't advance the plot.
- I couldn't believe half the things that happened (and that was just in the first third of the book). Bizarre things, and way too many of them. No, I don't think this is a fair portrayal of small-town America in the 1970s (or ever), and that annoys me (as someone from small-town America).
- Gosh, these characters! There's hardly a decent person in the book. Even the kids were utterly blah. Everyone feels like such a cardboard cut-out cliche. There's no joy in reading about these characters.
- I need a plot that actually moves at something above a snail's pace.
- There are a LOT of "bad guy" characters in this book, and according to their descriptions, they're all absolutely disgusting. (Quite a few of the baddies seem to be fat, too, by some strange "coincidence"...)
I skimmed some reviews to try to at least see what happens in the end, but I'm still not sure what (if anything) is the solution to the mystery. What little I did gather about the conclusion is even darker than I was expecting, so I don't think I missed much. Maybe I'll skip to the end and see if I can learn more, but I doubt it's worth the effort. The impression I get is that it's not a particularly satisfying conclusion, even for those who like the book.
I'm just glad to put this in the rearview mirror and try to find something that doesn't make me angry every time I read it!
