Long Bright River
Fiction
Riverhead Books
January 7, 2020
Advanced Reader Copy
496
Publisher via BookExpo
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.
My review:
I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this one was a tough read. Not tough because I didn't like it, but tough in its content. You would have to be living under a rock to not know about the huge opioid epidemic in this country right now. This book takes a small section of a Philadelphia suburb and brings the problem to the forefront. The book focuses on two sisters. One a police officer and one an addict. It goes back and forth in time between when they were growing up, and the present day (when one sister is desperately afraid that the other may get caught up in a string of murders in their neighborhood). I will admit that I'm not a huge fan of police procedural/detective stories, so I wish the backstory of the sisters lives together had taken more center stage than the investigation. I totally understand why this wasn't the case (or the hefty book might have topped out at hundreds of pages more), but I loved the formation of the characters and the descent into addiction of Kacey. The present day story did have merit, and is a well executed narrative of a multi-murder investigation with twists and turns to keep the reader engaged and on their toes.
A riveting look at the opioid crisis in an American neighborhood, combined with sisterly bonds and stellar writing, make this one a book not to be missed.
