The Roanoke Girls (2017)

Whoa.

If you want disturbing family drama, this is the book for you.

Holy cow.

I'm not even sure what I want to say. Perhaps I should wait a little longer to write a review, just so my thoughts can work themselves out. It's definitely a book that will stay with me for a while.

Engel did a fantastic job weaving in all the stories of the Roanoke girls. I liked how she formatted the book, specifically the timeline - shifting from then to now and back again. It helped increase the mystery and tension of the story.

As for the creepy factor - 10/10. These characters make you feel a bit better about yourself, like compared to them my life, my past experiences, and maybe my weird quirks aren't so bad. After all, I could be a Roanoke.

The story and the writing pulled me in right away, and if I had the luxury of time and no responsibilities, this is a book I could've read in a single sitting. It was that intense and mysterious.

I don't enjoy books with a lot of sexual content, so I did wish there wasn't so much description. I understand the need to mention it with the family relationships, but the sexual encounters between the teenagers felt like too much. I understand the reasoning behind it and how messed up they all were, but perhaps a little less could've worked just fine, too. ( )

The book starts with the premise of many a great family stories. An adult returns to a childhood home and comes face to face with the secrets of the past. A disturbing topic, an early reveal of the big secret of the book, a predictable conclusion, and a distanced narrator all make The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel a difficult book to engage with.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/07/the-roanoke-girls.html

Reviewed for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. ( )

What utter trash. And not in a good way. Maybe some people like this VC Andrews bullshit, maybe it's exciting for people to read something that seems "forbidden," but I'm SO OVER the same tired old plot that seems to be a huge fraction of book these days: girl has to go back to hometown for some reason, family secrets revealed, boy from her past saves her from her terribly terrible existence. Spoiler alert: the secret is always childhood sexual abuse. It's not a new story, and it's a story that some of us have lived. You haven't added anything new or different to the oeuvre because I've read this exact shit before. I was triggered and had a panic attack while reading because I stupidly decided to give this book a chance, thinking maybe, MAYBE this time the "secret revealed" would be something different. There was no advance warning in the description or the publishers about the content. Sensationalism for sensationalism's sake is useless and boring, and also potentially incredibly damaging to survivors of similar experiences. I received an ARC of this book for my honest review, so there it is.

Trigger warning for childhood sexual abuse and incest. ( )

After the death of her mother Lane moves to Kansas to live with grandparents she didn't even know. When she arrives she learns about the family history..Roanoke girls either stay or run. The reasons are family dysfunction at its finest. Despite the subject matter the story is absorbing and hard to put down as Lane will either stop the cycle or allow it to continue. ( )

I enjoyed this book, it was suspenseful. All too believable, you could feel the pain that ran deep in this family. ( )