ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, PARADE, REAL SIMPLE, and BUZZFEEDAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK“[Moore’s] careful balance of the hard-bitten with the heartfelt is what elevates Long Bright River from entertaining page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love.” – The New York Times … page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love.” – The New York Times Book Review
“This is police procedural and a thriller par excellence, one in which the city of Philadelphia itself is a character (think Boston and Mystic River). But it’s also a literary tale narrated by a strong woman with a richly drawn personal life – powerful and genre-defying.” – People
“A thoughtful, powerful novel by a writer who displays enormous compassion for her characters. Long Bright River is an outstanding crime novel… I absolutely loved it.”
—Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
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.
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Overrated
There were several surprises in the story, which always enhances a mystery. I thought it was pretty slow in the beginning and got bogged down in places. It was more of a documentary on the impact of the opioid crisis on a Philadelphia neighborhood than it was a police procedural or a crime mystery. It was a good book and I recommend it, but it wasn’t a great book. The drug story was a more enhanced, three dimensional character in the story than was the main heroine.
I loved every second of it!
I couldn’t put it down real page turner it really felt real of what goes on with so many suffering from addiction they are all human beings and need help thanks to Liz Moore for writing the great book
It was excellent.
Long Bright River is an expansive, meditative examination of how the opioid crisis has affected a pair of sisters, Mickey and Kacey. One sister is a cop, the other is an addict. Both grapple with the ways that addiction, abandonment, and trauma have affected their lives. And when Kasey goes missing and other women start turning up dead, Mickey will push herself to the limit to discover what happened.
Told in alternating timelines, this novel is so well plotted that it feels like you’re inside the story. All of the characters, however peripheral, have depth and dimension to them. You feel the emotional stuntedness of Mickey, and how that reverberates in her decisions. You feel the desperation of Kasey as she battles with the same addiction that her parents did. There’s also a compelling dynamic between Mickey and her former partner Truman that is as poignant as it is impactful.
In all, Liz Moore’s Long Bright River is equal parts triumph and tragedy, and doesn’t shy away from the complexities of real life. I’m calling it right now… this will be on all of the best-of lists for 2020.
This is not a comfortable or easy book to read. It highlights the opiod crisis and addiction of all forms. It talks about babies born to addicts and the withdrawal that they go through. It takes place in a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Kensington, which was once a neighborhood of working class families. As the jobs dried up, people chose or were forced to move and there are many abandoned buildings which become homes for those shooting up heroin or dealing and using other drugs. I will post a link at the end of my review from an article just released today about the rise of methamphetamine.
Back to the story. At the heart of the story there are two sisters, Mickey and Kacey orphaned when they were young, losing their mother to an overdose death. Their father has not been present in their lives. They have been raised by their grandmother, Gee, who barely was able to provide for their needs, shelter and food, while working several jobs. There wasn’t much love or personal attention shown to the girls and therefore they were extremely close while growing up.
Things changed dramatically in high school as Kacey started using drugs. The sisters grew apart, Mickey choosing a career as a policewoman and Kacey working temporary jobs to fund her drug habit. Mickey has tried to keep an eye on her sister as she was usually in the area that she was patrolling in Kensington.
There is a serial killer targeting young women. Mickey becomes desperate to find her sister, fearing that she will be the next target. She has vanished and no one seems to know where she is. She becomes desperate and risks the loss of her job and more as she digs deeper into Kacey’s life in the last few months and trying to find the killer.
Mickey is an extremely interesting and complicated woman. She is raising a young son on her own. She joined the police force because she wanted to help change her neighborhood and make a difference in people’s lives. The department doesn’t always agree with Mickey’s methods and she is not sure who she can trust. She has complicated feelings about her grandmother and extended family.
This is a multi-layered story, extremely well written, fast paced, heartbreaking and yet in the end hopeful. The characters are unique, well described and believable. I felt my heart breaking at times for people who live on the streets, tortured and controlled by their addictions.
I won’t give any more of the plot away but I do recommend looking at this link from The Philadelphia Inquirer just posted online today. The numbers are staggering and will, no doubt, shock many readers as they did me.
Here’s the link: https://www.inquirer.com/health/opioi…
I highly recommend this book as it is extremely explanatory and pertinent to our times when the crisis of addiction is all around us. I wouldn’t call this a police procedural because it is much more than that. It is a story about humanity, families, sisters, people and cities in crisis, love, forgiveness and hope.
This book is set to publish in January 2020.
I received an ARC of this novel from publisher through Edelweiss.