Title: THE UNREMEMBERED GIRL
Author: ELIZA MAXWELL
Genre: FICTION, WOMEN’S FICTION
Length: 332 PAGES
Publisher: LAKE UNION PUBLISHING
Received From: NETGALLEY
Release Date: NOVEMBER 1, 2017
ISBN: 9781542045858
Price: $14.95 USD (PAPERBACK)
Rating: 5 OUT OF 5 STARS 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
DESCRIPTION:
In the deep woods of East Texas, Henry supports his family by selling bootleg liquor. It’s all he can do to keep his compassionate but ailing mother and his stepfather—a fanatical grassroots minister with a bruising rhetoric—from ruin. But they have no idea they’ve become the obsession of the girl in the woods.
Abandoned and nearly feral, Eve has been watching them, seduced by the notion of family—something she’s known only in the most brutal sense. Soon she can’t resist the temptation to get close. Where Henry’s mother sees a poor girl in need, his father sees only wickedness. When Henry forges an unexpected bond with Eve, he believes he might be able to save her. He doesn’t know how wrong he is.
Eve is about to take charge of her own destiny—and that of Henry’s family. As both their worlds spin violently out of control, Henry must make an impossible choice: protect the broken young woman who’s claimed a piece of his soul, or put everyone he loves at risk in order to do the right thing.
MY REVIEW:
“In this place, it was easy to forget that the world had turned the corner into the twenty-first century. Time was different here, as if a spell had been cast that slowed the revolution of the earth. Those who lived and died nearby were touched by it, carrying the traces on their fingertips, in their lungs, woven through their hair. It was inescapable.”
It is here, in the deep forests of East Texas that Henry lives with his parents. They live in the cabin where he grew up. The difference is that he and his parents have switched roles and Henry is now the breadwinner. His bootlegging business won’t make them rich, but they have enough to scrape by.
When a ragged, dirty young woman emerges from the woods, Henry isn’t sure what to think, but his mother immediately senses something about the girl and takes her in.
That one simple act of kindness has a profound effect on Henry’s entire family, and after that day, he knows, their lives will never be the same.
Rife with tragedy, both past and present, and filled with more secrets than the entire US Government, this book will draw and hold your attention for its entirety.
Author Eliza Maxwell’s descriptions are so wonderfully vivid that I felt as though I was immersed in each and every scene. I was entranced, and despite the fact that it was 3am, I couldn’t put the book down even though I knew I would suffer from lack of sleep the next morning.
Don’t believe me? Read the following:
“The tall, stately pines that grew in drier soils soon gave way to the curving, dripping beauty of the cypress that thrived in the swamp. The ground sloped downward, giving a body the subtle sense of being pulled into the bottomlands that waited patiently just around the corners, where the dark heart of the marsh beat with a symphony of life. Stinging, singing, ancient, and deadly life, where the alligators were king, the snakes and snapping turtles were barons, and the woodpeckers were court jesters jangling their bells from the tops of the trees.”
Eliza Maxwell clearly has a gift for descriptive setting and, as if this were not enough, she also has the talent of perfect pacing. Filled with moments of heart-breaking tenderness, and others of extreme terror, this book is impossible to put down.
With realistic characters and so many surprising twists and turns that readers will be thinking about this book long after turning the final page.
I rate this book as 5 out of 5 Stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I would like to thank NETGALLEY for providing me with a free copy of this book.
ELIZA MAXWELL lives in Texas with a patient man, two impatient children and a bird named Sarah.
There’s also a bird dog. She lives a tortured existence.
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QUOTES FROM THE BOOK THAT I JUST HAD TO COPY:
“…he had enough on his own plate to keep from eyeing what was on his neighbors’.”
“[Henry] didn’t drink because he’d seen every kind of reason for diving into a bottle, seen them up close and personal. But he’d never seen a solitary soul come out of the back end of a bottle any better off thanthey had gone in.”
“Maybe God did live here … But if that were true, there was no denying God had a cruel side.”
“It was late. The part of the deep night when it’s impractical to do anything useful, but sleep won’t come, so the mind swirls around in the dark, skirting past old memories and bumping against unvoiced desires.”
“A stray thought occurred to him that if it weren’t for women, in all their cloaks of unfathomed mysteries, men would lead very boring lives.”
“I’ve found that most people are generally a danger only to themselves.”
“Some places hold on to death the way used fireworks hopd on to the stench of gunpowder and flames.”
“Yeah, you got that look on you too. Like trouble done got your number down by heart.”
“But I gotta tell you, friend. You’ll never appreciate the daylight till you’ve walked on the dark side of the night, without even the stars to show you the way.”
“Nothing on God’s green earth can make a man feel as alive as the love of a bad woman.”
“There’s no shaking loose of that. Doesn’t matter where you go, once she’s in you, that’s where she’s gonna stay. It’s like a virus. Nothing to do about it but hope you’re still kicking once it runs its course.”
“Grief had melted away most of the humanity that Livingston had possessed, leaving little behind. A mechanical man with a suit of skin hanging off him, powered by a smoking, burning passion.”
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