This was my first Liz Moore book, but I had heard wonderful things about her previous book, The Unseen World. This one appealed to me because at its core it is a thriller, and yet it has that literary leaning I’ve been enjoying in my thrillers of late.
This book centres around a young policewoman, Mickey. She is a single mother to a young son and though she feels a sense of purpose that drives her in her work, she is constantly struggling with the prejudice of her fellow officers and the financial woes that limit what she can provide for the son she adores.
Mickey had a rough start in life. Her mother died at a young age of a drug overdose, and her father eventually disappeared, leaving her and her younger sister, Kacey, to be raised by an angry and strict grandmother. They never had much and were often teased and isolated by their peers at school.
This situation leads Mickey to try and find a place to put her intelligence and ambition, while it leads Kacey to self-destructive patterns and drug addiction. The two inhabit the same crime-ridden streets, but from opposite sides of the law, a fact that Mickey tries to hide from her colleagues and that ends up creating a chasm that leaves her alone.
When a killer starts preying on vulnerable women in Mickey’s neighbourhood, she begins investigating, fearing that each new body might be her sister. She sets out not only to find the killer, but to figure out what happened to her sister, and whether she’s still alive.
The book is a difficult read in a lot of ways. The people in Mickey’s life are largely unpleasant and either take advantage of her or judge her. The isolation she feels while trying to be a good mother is palpable and heartbreaking. Her isolation is echoed in the landscape she inhabits – abandoned buildings, empty lots, dark alleys and dangerous shadows. The writing is moving, and at times I really felt for Mickey. But the plot was slow, meandering and sometimes repetitive. Even when I got to the end, looking back all the pieces didn’t slot into place as often happens with a thriller. It still seemed a bit of a mess. And there’s a chapter towards the end of the book that is meant to be a memorial to people who have died due to the opiod epidemic, but that seemed out of place – perhaps it would have been better suited to an afterward or epilogue. It took me out of the story, and though I can see the very real, very important issues underpinning this novel, it’s still a novel. That brought me out of the story and it was hard to get back into it.
I think this is a good book, and one that will probably appeal to anyone who enjoys a little literary mixed in with their thrillers. It will also appeal to you if you enjoy rooting for an underdog, stories with lots of grey area, and have a high tolerance for depressing elements in your fiction. It is a book on an important issue, if one that is hard to spend this much time in. It wasn’t the most satisfying thriller I’ve ever read, but it definitely held my attention, and I was intrigued by some of the choices Moore made with her writing and characters. I’m glad I finally gave her a try, and there was enough here that I appreciated to make me want to keep an eye on what she comes out with next.
Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn’t be more different.
Then one of them goes missing.
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate. – Goodreads
Book Title: Long Bright River
Author: Liz Moore
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Riverhead Books
Released: January 7, 2020
Genre: Fiction, Character-Driven, Thriller, Addiction
Pages: 492
Date Read: January 13-29, 2020
Rating: 5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.23/5 (11,429 ratings)