Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2017For fans of Donna Tartt and Megan Abbott, a novel about a woman whose family and identity are threatened by the secrets of her past, from the New York Times bestselling author of She’s Not ThereOn a warm August night in 1980, six college students sneak into the dilapidated ruins of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, looking for a thrill. With a … State Penitentiary, looking for a thrill. With a pianist, a painter and a teacher among them, the friends are full of potential. But it’s not long before they realize they are locked in—and not alone. When the friends get lost and separated, the terrifying night ends in tragedy, and the unexpected, far-reaching consequences reverberate through the survivors’ lives. As they go their separate ways, trying to move on, it becomes clear that their dark night in the prison has changed them all. Decades later, new evidence is found, and the dogged detective investigating the cold case charges one of them—celebrity chef Jon Casey— with murder. Only Casey’s old friend Judith Carrigan can testify to his innocence.
But Judith is protecting long-held secrets of her own – secrets that, if brought to light, could destroy her career as a travel writer and tear her away from her fireman husband and teenage son. If she chooses to help Casey, she risks losing the life she has fought to build and the woman she has struggled to become. In any life that contains a “before” and an “after,” how is it possible to live one life, not two?
Weaving deftly between 1980 and the present day, and told in an unforgettable voice, Long Black Veil is an intensely atmospheric thriller that explores the meaning of identity, loyalty, and love. Readers will hail this as Boylan’s triumphant return to fiction.
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I didn’t expect to like this book, but I did – very much.
I’ve never had any real idea of what a trans person’s life must be like. This book is educational in that sense, besides being a great read! I’m only 3/4’s done, but so far, it’s great. I recommend this to any fans of authors like Tana French or Donna Tartt. Yes, I’d place it in the literature category.
A great book. Fabulous story. Loved the characters. Well written
I voluntarily received an ARC of Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan in exchange for an honest review.
This book is labeled as a mystery/thriller, but it was too slow paced for my enjoyment. There were also so many characters introduced at once that it was too hard to keep track of who was who at first. I had to reread the introductions multiple times to grasp who was who. The concept of the storyline was an interesting one and if the book had been faster paced, I probably would have enjoyed the book more and given it a higher rating.
Let’s be honest here, there are going to be spoilers in this review. I cannot begin to adequately share my thoughts without them. That being said the first thing you are going to want to ask is why a Christian fiction blogger is reviewing a book written by a trans woman about a trans individual. There are two truths here. First, I chose to read and review this book based on the synopsis that you see above and didn’t really know the author until I set up the author bio you see below. Second, what does being trans have to do with your ability to write a book that may or may not be interesting? Would you have known that this book was based on a trans character if you read that synopsis? And really, I don’t care. A character is a character and as long as they give me an interesting story and aren’t totally one-dimensional then they can be anything they want. Seriously people, I read words … all the words.
Here’s where it gets a bit dicey though. There are really three elements to this book and there wasn’t one of them that really worked for me. We have the thriller/mystery from the old prison. We have the trans story. And we have the way those two things work together. I’m going to address each one separately because that’s how my mind is approaching this book. Let’s start with the mystery. We have a group of friends that I never get a good grasp on their personalities, they don’t feel well fleshed out and outside the idea that two once dated, two just got married of which one of them is obese and the other has some weird all over the place accent, they are all just flat. They don’t really breath for me. Tragedy happens, they go their separate ways (minus the one that went missing that awkward night) and suddenly find themselves thrust back together 35 years later when the body is found. The mystery, while has the beginnings of something really interesting, feels like it was haphazardly thrown together to be the vehicle to tell one of the friends story. Even the reveal was anticlimactic.
Let’s talk about the trans part of the story. I’m being intentionally vague about the identity of this person to keep spoilers to a minimum. There was so much potential here to tell a rich story during a time when coming out homosexual was so far from the norm it was still considered a mental illness, forget about the idea of being transsexual. The problem, for me, lies in the fact that I was simply given a ‘list’ of sorts of the persons experiences. I never was drawn into their experience or life at all. There were some attempts to make the character relateable but they quickly squelched themselves. I was told about this person’s life but never lead to experience their life. Even when provided opportunity to get inside this character’s head it disintegrated quickly into philosophical rambling and nothing really emotionally connecting. When the story reached the point to bring this particular character back into the fold with previous friends and of course the climax of the mystery, I lost even more interest in it all. They never fit together, it’s almost like they didn’t share the same story but merely the same pages. The last quarter of the book was so anticlimactic for me. The big drama? Didn’t fill out like it could have. I know that there are people who will find their attention drawn into this book. I was more reading to find my attention, convinced it had to get better. There are readers who will relate to one character or another, who will find the mystery appealing. I’m not that reader. Not having been familiar with this author previous to this book I’d be interested to see if this was just a one-off however. I’m not looking away from this author…yet.
I was provided a complimentary copy of this book by Blogging for Books. I was not compensated for this review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. I was not required to write a positive review.