What becomes of those individuals who either due to mental illness or disability grow into adulthood being fundentally unable to cope with life?

One such is the Christopher of this title, broken by early tragedy. But Alice, an artist, whose story we follow over two or more decades, seems to be drawn to lame ducks, and takes him in. It is a decision she will grow to regret further down the line.

But there is a broader context here - that of the village and village life against the backdrop of the Fens, against which all this takes place. A remote part of the UK that keeps to itself its hidden tragedies and.secrets, and where old transgressions remain as unfinished business in need of atonement. There is something timeless about the novel - it tells of events and situations that could have taken place centuries ago, although in fact it all takes place a couple of decades before and after the current milennium. This is also something of a slow burn, especially in terms of its unfolding mystery.

Highly recommended.

This story is as haunting as the backdrop from which it emerges, and seems to recognise that guilt

*This book releases August 15th. I obtained an early copy through Net Galley. All thoughts are my own.

Rating: 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 stars for the purposes of Net Galley and Goodreads.

Synopsis: As a child, Christopher was best friends with a girl named Cassie. When they are permanently separated, Christopher is left wandering the village unable to cope with reality and spends his days reliving his past, breaking down, and recovering.

Alice is a former resident of the village, brought back to her childhood home when her mother's health begins to decline. There, she begins to feel a new connection to her old home and also meets Christopher, a strange but honest man who she feels she should take responsibility for. But will her decision come back to haunt her years down the line?

Review: There were some major things about this book that didn't gel with me. But, before I get to those, I'll cover some things I liked about this book. First, the perspective of the village itself is interesting, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before in a book. It's a creative way of getting the all-knowing narrator for certain chapters and it was the most unique thing about the book.

Second, I love when books utilize telling a story over a period of years, and although I feel like some pacing problems arose from that usage here, it's still interesting to see the changing of friendships, trust, and characters over so long a time.

On to the more negative side of the review. Mostly, I feel this book is falsely marketed as a thriller. It begins like a thriller, it recaps the beginning at around the 80% mark, but it is not suspenseful. It reads more like general fiction in my opinion. And with that, I feel like since it doesn't really commit to suspense, it should commit more to character development. As mentioned, the pacing of this book felt slightly off. It would skip over information like how these two characters became so comfortable with each other or why one character might become more distrustful of the other character and simply mention those things offhandedly, and then repeat something else multiple times. It takes away from the decision making of the characters, especially Alice, because the audience is not seeing enough of their interactions together.

Also, Alice is the only one with any solid character development, and even that is shaky by the end. Christopher felt kind of all over the place to me (I realize you'd think that's a given, but I am considering the context here), and other side characters, even ones that are brought up often, are just there to fill a role (supportive friend, for example). There is also a background village history plot going on that was just very hard to follow for some reason? There is just so many names and even with rereading segments I only have what feels like the vaguest understanding of it.

Finally, I by no means claim to have any in-depth psychological knowledge. But I am quite certain the events towards the end of this book (that I cannot go in depth on because spoilers are bad) are entirely unrealistic. It's slightly saved at the very end, but leading up to that feels like reading a severely outdated guide to curing mental health disorders.

Overall, this was a pretty short read. I think there are some interesting ideas here, and I think that there are some interpretations (i.e. supernatural) that even make the execution a little better, but I'm not sure the whole story supports that. I think folks looking for a pretty casual read (and not looking for a lot of accuracy on mental health) could have a pretty good time with this one.