Review: Riveting and Intricately Detailed
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
D. M. Mitchell why haven't I read your incredible novels before? It is always wonderful to find a new author, but I feel like you should be on the tip of every critic's tongue with high praise for your characterization, your plotting, your pacing, the perfect dialogue.This story not only showed the dysfunctional part of families, but the dysfunctional parts of small towns and did it in such a creepy, chilling, almost resolute way, that there was no stopping the wrongdoing.The characters are classic. The family dynamics were more true to life than most of the fluffy tripe peddled today. Parents treating grown children as youngsters. Siblings battling over parental attention. Relatives nosing in and screwing things up. Just like real life. Secrets buried for decades and blamed on the blameless. And in small towns, everyone has an opinion, some may have more than one.I had a lot of sympathy for our hero. He has no clue that he is far different from the family that he was born into. Going back home for his father's funeral, he will find out all kinds of things, not only about Sylvia Tredwyn, but about his family as well. It just keeps piling higher and deeper around him. The way Mitchell layers each plot twist is so intricately detailed that there is no wiggle room for our hero. Every layer of new information that the reader receives turns the situation on its head.Aliens, Men in Black, Murder, Arson, Mugging, Kidnapping, Drowning, Burning, LSD, Hit and Run, and so much more...I cannot recommend this book highly enough! Thank you for writing such an excellent novel. I am thrilled you have so many more I can read.