I am a big fan of Christopher Yates debut, Black Chalk. Although this follow up was just as thrilling and riddled with puzzle-like plot twists, it didn't have the intensity of his other title. I appreciate his background in puzzles and it's certainly reflected in his work, but it just didn't suck me in like his other title. That said, I enjoyed the return to a storyline that took a past event and moved the involved characters froward in time with an unknown element of the past. I look forward to his next release!

3.5*
What should have been a fun outing for three young teens, quickly turns tragic. Leaving all three with lifelong scars that each need to deal with in their own way. Years later, their paths will cross one more time. Will tragedy strike twice or will they all find the truth and closure they so desperately need.

This book started off very strong. Great story...great characters, with the potential to be an amazing read. Unfortunately, somewhere around the halfway mark it just, well…I’m not sure what happened. The storyline slowed right down and then veered off in directions that, at the time, didn’t feel relevant.

When I started this book I was so excited! Couldn’t stop thinking about it every time I had to step away. If only that excitement could have lasted throughout.

It is written in several POVs and timelines that become difficult to follow. As all the storylines and characters converged at the end, for what should have been a spectacular finale instead I was left with a fizzle. Worse yet, so many unanswered questions.

A traveling sister read with Brenda and Jennifer!:)

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan-Picador and Christopher J. Yates for an ARC to review in exchange for an honest review.

For this review and all our Traveling Sister reviews please visit Brenda and Norma’s fabulous book blog:
http://www.twogirlslostinacouleereading.wordpress.com

I started off lost in the brushy, woody lush coulee reading Grist Mill Road with three of my Traveling Sisters and we ended up in the thorny woody rocky coulee looking for a way out.

Grist Mill Road is a dark, complex story of secrets, deceit, and misunderstandings that started off with a bang for us and shocking us with the brutal crime committed by one character Matthew towards Hannah while Patch watched and didn’t intervene. We were drawn in right away to the mystery of the crime and what really happened that day and we flew through the first part of the story as fast as we could. Then things started to slow down for us as Christopher Yates took us down some windy and twisty roads through the coulee till we hid a ridge of blazing white rock like a wall and were left a bit confused with the ending.

Christopher J Yates skillfully and uniquely takes us back and forth in time and from one narrator to another giving us different perspectives to the day that bonds Matthew, Hannah and Patch together. We loved being drawn into their minds and seeing their perspectives however at times things started to get a little bogged down for us with some of their thoughts and things started to get a little murky for us.

Overall we enjoyed this story for it’s different and interesting characters and cleverly written perspectives. We recommend for anyone looking for a little something a little more complexed and different to their mysteries.

Published on January 9, 2018

Thank you, NetGalley, Macmillan-Picador and Christopher J Yates for a copy to read and review.

All of our Traveling Sisters Reviews can be found on our sister blog:
http://www.twogirlslostinacouleereadi...

In my review of "Black Chalk", Mr. Yates' earlier book, I likened the story to Ravel's "Bolero" – lots of lead up to a single point.

This book is rather like that too with a lot of dancing around with not much going on after the initial horrific scene. Not my cup of tea, thanks.

I received a review copy of "Grist Mill Road" by Christopher J. Yates (Picador) through NetGalley.com.

A story of how scars suffered in childhood never really go away.  It may be a physical scar, plainly visible for a lifetime.  Emotional and psychological scarring can be harder to detect, temporarily hidden like a dangerous secret.  Lying in wait, temporarily dormant.  Those secrets are laid bare here, impacting lives that have already suffered losses.  This one is deliciously dark, and disturbing in its ramifications.  <i>'. . . the story of a girl and a boy and a BB gun . . .'</i>

As adolescents, Hannah, Patrick and Matthew were involved in a terrible, life-changing tragedy. Fast forward twenty-six years later and everyone has moved on with their lives. Hannah is a crime reporter, Patrick is laid off but finding his passion in cooking and blogging, and Matthew…well, neither of them knows where Matthew is, and they don't want to. Unfortunately, he comes out of the woodwork unexpectedly, and dredges up a past Hannah and Patrick would both rather forget. And as often happens when you dredge, some debris is brought to the surface, some truths that Hannah and Patrick would rather have stayed buried.

What I liked about this book is the way the storyline moved along, going back and forth between the past and present, as well as jumping between perspectives, leaving breadcrumbs, provoking questions. The layout of the story made it easy to keep going.

At some point, it became clear that things were not as they originally seemed, and then the missing element became painfully clear long before the actual reveal. In fact, it came so early that I was expecting to be wrong, or for something more shocking to enhance that element, but that never happened.

There were definitely some elements that I didn't care for. Hannah's perspective in the beginning was hard to get through. Her character felt detached, almost lifeless, and connecting to her was nearly impossible. In fact, though her bits of the story improved in the long run, I never got to liking her. In the beginning, I had sympathy for what she had been through, but in the end, I disliked her so much, even that was a struggle. And then I felt terrible because no one deserves what happened to her.

On reflection, I didn't really like any of the characters, but the one I liked the most I hated early on. And the ending. Don't even start with me. To avoid spoilers, I will repeat what I told a friend who was working their way through it around the same time: the feeling I had at the end of this book was very similar to the one I had at the end of Gone Girl.

Strong writing and greatly developed characters, but at times a little weighted down by too much description and unrelated details.

Many readers discovered Christopher J. Yates with the release of Black Chalk. Certainly those readers have been anxious to see what he had to offer next and they will not be disappointed. Structurally complex, this gritty read will bind readers to the pages until the very last secret is revealed.

In 1982, Matthew, Patrick, and Hannah are linked together through a terrible crime. Twenty-six years later, they reconnect.

A dark story told with two timelines, 1982 and 2008. Each chapter was about a main character (Matthew, Patrick, or Hannah), though some were told in first person point of view and others were third person. The back and forth between timelines, characters, and points of view slowed the pace of the story.

The first chapter in the book tells the tragic crime that occurred in their youth, and the following chapters fill in the blanks of what led to that event. There seemed to be a lot of filler in the book, like food blogging, geology, the history of cement, and even explanations of political aspirations of a character's father. While some of this information may have been interesting, it bogged down the story and didn't provide much insight into the characters. I never felt connected to anyone in the story, and didn't much care what happened to any of them. For me, the ending left too many unanswered questions.

Great story line and idea, keeping the thrill and the suspense alive throughout the entire read.

this book went somewhere i didn’t expect, it had so many more layers than i expected upon starting. it wasn’t bad but it also wasn’t my favorite and i am not entirely sure i even understood the ending.

Published by Picador on January 9, 2018

In 1982, when Patrick is twelve years old, his friend Matthew ties a girl named Hannah to a tree and shoots her dozens of times with a BB gun. Patrick does nothing to stop it. One of the BBs enters her eye and, as far as the boys can tell, kills her. That afternoon shapes the rest of Patrick’s life.

In 2008, Patrick is unemployed. He spends his days testing and blogging recipes. He has violent fantasies about the man who fired him, and has in fact begun to stalk him. Patrick is being treated for anxiety but his condition cannot match his wife’s. Her nightmares are relentless; she needs therapy more than Patrick. Still, Patrick’s therapist asks him to write about his past, and it is from that writing that we learn about the events of Patrick’s childhood.

At some point, Patrick’s past and present intertwine and the reader wonders how Patrick will cope with the flood of stressors that confront him. After a third of the story has been told, the novel shifts to Hannah’s point of view as she tells her true crime story, deliberately mimicking the techniques of In Cold Blood — if Capote had been recalling his life as a twelve-year-old girl. That’s the least successful segment of the novel. Hannah’s voice never struck me as genuine.

The novel changes points of view and time frames several times before the reader hears from Matthew, whose perspective adds another layer to the reader’s evolving understanding of the events that shaped the characters. Pretty much every life in Grist Mill Road is touched by violence, most of it senseless. And pretty much everyone in the novel is keeping a secret, a couple of which involve murders. Of course, in fiction as in life, secrets will out, and their revelations inspire most of the novel’s drama. The danger in the approach is that the secrets, once revealed, will seem melodramatic or too coincidental to accept. Grist Mill Road approaches both of those lines but never crosses them. Christopher Yates keep control of his material at all times, producing a story that is reasonably convincing.

None of the central characters deserve what they get, but none of them deserve sainthood. Characterizations are strong and the plot takes surprising turns as it approaches an eventful ending, but the strength of Grist Mill Road is that the initial story seems simple, but with the addition of each new perspective, the seemly simple story gains weight and meaning. The story illustrates the limitations imposed by our own singular perspective — only by seeing the same events through the eyes of others can we approach a full understanding of those events. The way the different perspectives gradually reframe the story in the reader’s mind is my primary reason for recommending Grist Mill Road.

RECOMMENDED

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Ludwig Riviera's review Jan 31, 2018 · edit
really liked it

I've been looking forward to reading Grist Mill Road for very long, and I enjoyed it to a certain degree that I decided to write a review.

About 50 pages in, I made up my mind to rate this book with 5 stars.
However, the ending wasn't quite what I'd hoped. It was the kind of situation where you're completely drawn to a fictional character who ends up not getting the ending you think they deserved.

But the reason I couldn't give this book less than 4 stars is that I liked Matthew's character very much, especially for the second half of the book- the part that is mostly spent by Matthew explaining the true aspects of the main focus of story that features Patrick (Patch) witnessing his friend with a BB gun pointed towards Hannah. However, Matthew was the only one I was rooting for among all of the other characters.

Aside from that, Yates' writing is very neat and impeccable. The very first lines especially are so very compelling.
I also love how, through the division of the story between two periods of time- 1982 and 2008, the author highlights the father-son relationship in the sincerest and most terrifying way.

***Thank you to Netgalley and Picador for providing me with my copy of Grist Mill Road in exchange for an honest review***

I am so glad to have read this book. The writing was excellent, the storyline holds your interest and I am a big fan of books that are told in alternate times. The book begins with 2 teenage boys, Matt and Patrick who has just shot Hanna, a teenage girl in the eye with a BB gun. The story flows from there. As we read the book we learn more about the life of the three main characters and sub characters ie: the family. The book moved from the day of the shooting to 2008. We think we know the full story but in the final chapters we find out there is much we did not know. What happened back in 1982 if finally revealed in 2008.This is a great read and you would do yourself an injustice by not reading it. The ending was very good. I will look for more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

This one wasn't a hit for me. I kept reading because I wanted to find out exactly what happened that day, but I felt let down by the ending.

The year is 1982. Matthew, Patrick (Patch), and Hannah, are young teenagers when a horrible crime is committed, one that leaves them all devastated.

Decades later, in 2008, the three are adults and the stories of their lives unfold for us, all colored by the misperceptions and lies that have been told about that long ago day in 1982. None of the 3 have escaped unscathed. It’s a complicated story, but when the truth was finally revealed, I was disappointed. If the author wanted to create sympathy for a character and a reason for what they did, he failed with this reader. I felt sympathy for what this person’s life was like but not for the actions taken. We are also told throughout that we don't know the whole story and that maybe the victim wasn't entirely innocent. Nope, once it was revealed I was underwhelmed and I didn't buy it as a reason for culpability.

On the positive side, the writing itself was excellent, the characters well-developed, and the author succeeded in creating tension and a desire to get to the bottom of the story. Unfortunately, the narrative sometimes meanders along with lots of information about cooking and cooking blogs, and by everything you ever wanted to know about the history of the concrete business. The trouble was, I don’t care about ever knowing anything about concrete and it felt out of place, like a Wikipedia entry.

Lastly, I like a book to contain quotation marks. It feels like a gimmick to not use them.

I received an e-galley via Netgalley

Grist Mill Road was as prime example of how different people involved in the same story see things. The story takes you through multiple views of one pivotal moment in all of their lives. I found that the author used a subtle touch and let the characters actions speak for themselves without over explaining.

This starts off a little slowly but then gathers pace and you will not want to put down. It flicks between characters and back in time. Absolutely loved this and recommend it 100%

I received an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley. I thought it sounded good and was looking forward to reading it. I finished it a week ago and have been pondering my review since then. I rarely give a book a bad review perhaps because I don't finish books that I don't like. Since a review was expected I pushed on to finish it, and I did not like it. The story starts out with a gruesome crime committed 20 years earlier involving 3 friends, Matthew, Patrick, and Hannah. The reason for the crime is revealed, slowly I thought, from the perspectives of these characters. The story moves back and forth from the time of the crime to the present, with more time spent in the past. I spent the entire book wondering what on earth this young teenager could have done to provoke such a crime, and when it was revealed I did not think young Matthew's extreme actions were warranted. As a youth he seemed evil and I had a hard time relating to the successful man we see twenty years later. Patrick seemed like a wimpy youth who didn't have many friends and bowed to peer pressure with Matthew. Hannah is a successful adult but she is not fleshed out much in the future years. This book felt dark and depressing and reading it in a dark gloomy January did not help things. I am sorry I finished it.

4 sad stars

A lie can have many tentacles. It can reach out in so many directions, affect so many people, change so many lives. A lie that is left to smolder never being refuted or put to right can not only damage the teller but also all those the lie can include. “Lies and secrets, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.”

Matthew, Patrick, and Hannah are friends. They go to school together, have time spent together and yet all the wonderful and carefree times are ended when a horrible thing happens. Hannah is left stricken, while Patrick becomes an unwilling participant frozen in time, and Mathew, a product of an abusive father does something that changes the course of his life and his friends as well.

You blame the one child, not fully knowing the true story. You might hate the other child, not fully knowing the story, and you might feel sorrow for the last child not really knowing the full story. Nothing awful ever happens by itself, it burns away through others, creating a life of hidden secrets, nightmares, and troubled lives.

Twenty six years after the tragedy we see the children grown to adulthood. None of them have been able to forget, none of them can leave the place where tragedy struck. Can they escape and find the avenues of peace they seek? Is this destined to be always there, always eating away at them, always being at the core of their being.

Mr Yates has written a fine psychological thriller, that makes one keenly aware that oftentimes what we have done as children, never really leaves our consciousness.

Thank you to Christopher Yates, Macmillan-Picador, and NetGalley for providing a copy of this novel.