There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

A slow starter based around the disappearance of a 5 year old which focuses on the different view points of the townspeople. I did enjoy the story but it felt more like fiction and was quite flat, hence the 3 stars. It was well written and an interesting read.

This book fell a little flat to me. I wanted to get into it so bad but I just never felt connected to the story

Thank you for allowing me to read 'Tornado Weather' which I enjoyed very much. Having each chapter told from a different point of view with inter-connected stories was interesting and I felt that I could understand the perceptions of the different characters. I would be interested in reading Ms Kennedy's next book.

A slow burn of a story. We start with a kidnapping of a five year old. We meet the townspeople and see how everyone is interconnected.

While I enjoyed the book, it felt a little flat at part. This is being tagged as a mystery but read more like straight up fiction. It's the story of how one event can affect an entire town.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A searing, in depth look at a small Indiana town on a downward spiral.

TORNADO WEATHER was just an excellent read. Kennedy builds unique, sympathetic and thought-worthy characters (whole host of them) and creates a wonderful sense of place. While the novel is more about the characters than the plot, Kennedy builds a fine sense of mystery that propels the book forward. It isn't a page tuner, though. I wanted to savor each page and each sentence Kennedy wrote. This was the first book of Kennedy's that I have read but I will certainly seek out the others.

This book was about as entertaining as watching paint dry.

I DNF at 30%
I dragged this one for two months but I couldn't get into the story. The premise seemed interesting but I couldn't get into the story, I found the writing to be lacking and the amount of characters that were introduced in every chapter left me confused. The chapters were too long and they didn't grip me.
Part of me wants to know what happened but I know I'd never get through to find out. I will have to stay in the unknown.
Thank you to the publisher for the copy provided.

A great contemporary novel about society, politics and small town life. It is a MUST READ.

3.5 Stars. Colliersville, Indiana is a struggling small town where everyone knows their neighbor. They don't always have an accurate view of each other, but they're like family: "familiar, maddening, easy to take for granted." Community tensions flare when the owner of the local dairy farm fires all the local workers and replaces them with Mexican citizens. Long term residents resent their new neighbors. Suddenly, many locals are jobless and their predictable little town is filled with people they don't recognize and who speak a language they don't understand. By May, the dairy farm has been shut down by law enforcement and a five-year-old girl is missing. How much more can this small town take?

This seems to be my year of reading books with a bazillion characters! Each of the eighteen chapters is a different townsperson's perspective: an investigative reporter working undercover to expose the dairy farm's unethical practices, a racist militia man's daughter, various people working low-wage jobs, a pill addict in rehab, a soldier, a police officer, the dairy farm CEO's transgender teenager, and more. Daisy's disappearance is on the periphery of everyone's thoughts, but for the most part, everyone is just trying to make it through the never-ending days. The townspeople have theories about what happened to Daisy, but most of them are just as clueless as we are.

The people of Colliersville are tied together by vicinity, but they seem to be living in parallel to one another. Sometimes people seem to know more about what's going on in their neighbor's home than the people actually involved! One thing I loved about the structure is that you might form an opinion based on gossip in one chapter, but a later chapter gives you a different version of the story that might alter your original thinking. I also loved searching for the clues of how each person was connected to the larger community and discovering what they know—or think they know—about their neighbors. This is the type of book I prefer reading on an e-reader, because of the searching capabilities.

In Colliersville, there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. Being different is among the worst offenses. Some hide who they are to avoid trouble. Many of the characters feel left behind by their loved ones and the world at large. Life has passed them by and nothing has turned out the way it was supposed to. They all struggle with inertia. A sense regret and loneliness pervades the atmosphere. For all the talk of personal responsibility, there's not always an abundance of it. The self-loathing tends to direct outwards.There's always an outside force that prevented them from reaching their full potential. The guy who failed his drug test blames Juan for stealing his janitorial job. Helman Yoder blames the government for taking his business away, conveniently forgetting that he made a conscious decision to break the law in spectacular fashion. The apartments that supposedly went downhill because of the "illegals" were always dilapidated. Much of the rising crime in that area is due to people harassing the occupants.

President Obama gets blamed for even the most personal of problems, though some of the most visceral anger would be more accurately directed at the cycle of life. They yearn to return to the long gone good-old-days: when they were young, their kids were still safe at home, and before they experienced real loss and disappointment. Colliersville High School's head cook Shellie Pogue admits that the town might've always been circling the drain, but at least when Reagan was in office she felt like she was in "good hands." Now it feels like "the world she knew, or thought she knew, was shrinking to the size of her palm."

There are people in Colliersville that see things a little differently, but many of them seem to keep their thoughts to themselves. Perhaps there's a message there that avoiding hard topics and being polite to keep the peace actually has the opposite effect. One of the most memorable characters is Helen, who has just suffered a major loss. She's fed up with everything. She has had enough of all the grand theatrics that disguise ugly things and the seemingly selfless acts done with selfish motivations.

I liked the gritty realism of the early chapters, so I wasn't prepared for the mystical turn in the last quarter. Looking back there were hints, especially in that first chapter. Colliersville is built in an area where Native Americans were killed and there was talk of blood curses after Daisy went missing. Still, I was caught off guard by the guy talking to animals (which we find out is actually happening) and the reincarnation section. Maybe my gaps in knowledge or cynicism that prevented me from enjoying those parts. Even though I found the contrast jarring, the last chapter was emotional and beautifully written, though perhaps a bit saccharine.

Tornado Weather shines a light on "man's inhumanity to man." Most of these characters don't even treat themselves humanely because they don't think they deserve any better. The residents of Colliersville have legitimate fears about where their next paycheck will come from and one-size-fits-all government solutions, but fears don't always manifest themselves in the most productive or rational ways. The story of this small town reveals the importance of community and showing empathy for others. It's difficult to hate someone once you get to know them. Will Daisy's disappearance and nature's fury force the community to come together? Maybe if the citizens of Colliersville can forgive themselves for their past sins, they will be able to open their hearts to each other and inject some life into their dying community.

Interesting book. I was on board until the last chapter. It just didn't seem to fit and felt like too much of a turn on the narrative at the last minute.

This review is in exchange for a free e-galley from netgalley.com.

Gritty, Poetic, and Raw. This character-driven drama is so captivating and real, with an ending that will leave tears in your eyes. Centered around a small town in the Bible-belt of Indiana, amidst chaos and drama, the search for a missing girl brings out everyone's skeletons, and then some.

I'm very glad I had the opportunity to read this through netgalley's access. I thought it was well written and I loved all the characters. Their stories were tied together in a great way and the ending of Daisy's story was amazing. I was not expecting it and it brought a tear to my eyes. I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

The town is Colliersville, Indiana, but it could be any number of small towns scattered across the United States. Towns where, as the jobs get smaller, the economic disparity gets bigger. This is where Deborah Kennedy chooses to set her debut novel, Tornado Weather and it’s the epitome of the tinderbox that is America right now. It’s a greedy dairy farmer who, in an effort to increase profits has fired all his longtime employees replacing them with illegal Mexican workers. It’s a five-year-old girl in a wheelchair going missing after school. Men setting up militias and armories on their property. An ignorant laundromat owner who puts up a No Mexicens sign in the window. School lunch ladies, hair salon owners, a teenager who feels ready to stop being Wally and become Willa and one who goes to Iraq.

Much like Sara Taylor’s The Shore (another novel I loved) Tornado Weather is a novel formatted as a series of short stories. This can go very wrong and feel disjointed, but Kennedy has impeccable timing in linking each chapter. A new character emerges, seemingly unrelated to anyone else, but just as it starts to get twitchy there is a sentence that brings a blink of recognition at the connection. And, in the same way a tornado gathers with tightening force she layers these stories and characters to increase their impact. But while The Shore spanned decades to tell its tale Tornado Weather only lasts for the three short months of tornado season. In that time Yoder Dairy will be shut down by the Feds, its workers dispersed to jobs even less palatable and the mystery of Daisy Gonzalez will be solved.

Gritty and dark, this is the middle America we don’t want to think about. Most of the characters live in some kind of poverty, not at the level of destitution but at the level that breeds hate. A lot of it and against anything that isn’t familiar and can be blamed for being poor. Forget the drinking and drugs and the inability to hold a job, Tornado Weather is filled with the kind of men who hate out of all proportion for their own failures. They don’t want the jobs the Mexicans are taking but they will still blame them. This hate could sink the novel, but Kennedy balances it with enough fortitude, pathos and humor to give the reader a well-wrought portrait of a place and people that are not unknown to any of us. We may not like it, but we know it.

For some, the fact that Daisy does not remain the focus throughout the novel will be problematic, but she isn’t meant to be any more than a delicate thread. The town is. Colliersville, Indiana—a sad place that once was thriving but is now tired and rundown. Tornado Weather begins with a missing little girl but ends with a town blown apart by forces that have nothing to do with the weather.

Colliersville, Indiana, five year old Daisy Gonzalez goes missing. A handicapped young girl in a wheel chair, last seen getting off the school bus. First let me say this is not really a mystery,found the synopsis misleading, the missing girl is used as the defining characteristic to highlight a town in decline. Yoder Dairy, one of the towns leading employers has replaced all it workers with Mexican migrants and a journalist who is undercover has been sent to investigate working conditions at the dairy.

We hear from different people in the town, more like connected short stories than a straight novel. The missing girl is referred to by some and really not mentioned n depth again until the end. The prose is good but somewhat wordy imho. We have a town that is in dire straits, racial prejudice a huge factor among others and then added to that a tornado. All these things, along with the huge cast of characters become overwhelming, and well, just too much is included here to make this a tight and focused narrative.

This isn't too say that some of the narratives from the towns people were not interesting, they were. Some more than others. Think this author can definitely write and would probably try one of her books again.

ARC from Netgalley and Flatiron publishers.

*Book from NetGalley

"Tornado Weather" by Deborah Kennedy tells the story of a handicapped 5-year-old girl who goes missing and how this affects the residents of Colliersville, Indiana. The problem is the girl, who happens to be Mexican-American, becomes a distant thought for the too many white characters, and the race factor belittles the girl's significance as the main character tying the others together.

Daisy is a young girl in a wheelchair who goes missing. The moment before she goes missing is described in the beginning, but the actual moment of her going missing is never really expressed. It's skipped into another character's story. The book jumps from one random character in town to another, who are all selfishly wrapped up in their own lives where the girl's situation may get a small mention.

Then the town is predominantly white with a rising Mexican immigrant population due to a major dairy farm, so many of the white residents are annoyed with the changing dynamics. But most of the characters' point of views are from the white residents without really getting a perspective from those in the Mexican community. One Mexican character gets a chapter or maybe two and a presumably black character gets a super short chapter, but for race to be a topic in the story and only explored from one side weakens the actual story. Even Hector, Daisy's concerned father, never gets his own chapter as if his voice doesn't matter because he isn't white.

Some of the chapters go from first person to third person and back and forth, which is distracting for the voice not to be consistent. The story would've been stronger if chapters actually had the name and age of the character since the characters changed each chapter. Or really if the perspective came from only three or so characters. It takes a page or two to realize where you are and who's story you're listening to. And some stories weren't interesting at all, and again had nothing to do with Daisy missing.

This book is a mishmash of stories from self-absorbed characters when the story is supposed to be about a missing girl. The writing is good but not exceptional or stylistically unique.

"... he has a heart in the right place, even if it pumps dumb."

This is a story of a missing 5 year-old girl who is missing in Colliersville, Indiana. It is also a story of bigotry, poverty, and loss. It is told in a collection of vignettes, each featuring different residents of the town.

There were LOTS of characters to keep track of, and yes, by the end of the book the different pieces loosely tied together but to me it wasn't worth the roundabout journey getting to the end of the tale.

Out of all the different characters in the story I felt drawn to only one - the town's dead animal collector. The rest were either in the story for too short of time or were too obnoxious to care about.

So I won't be reading this one again and I can't recommend it with a good conscience. Technically I feel the writing itself is good and that's why I rated it two stars rather than one.

I received this book from Flatiron Books through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

“Tornado Weather” is a remarkable debut by Deborah Kennedy. The framework for the novel is a missing 5 year old girl and a looming tornado. With that as the outline, Kennedy delves deeply into the lives of the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town. As secrets come to light the reader discovers the connections both small and large that bind these characters together. Those secrets, some of which are truly heartbreaking, show that no one is as average and ordinary as they may appear on the surface. Kennedy excels at bringing her characters to life and the authenticity of the dialogue is pitch perfect. I especially appreciated the way Kennedy brought so much compassion and understanding to current “hot-button” issues. An excellent first novel which I hope will lead to a long and distinguished career.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 7/9/17.