Review by Booklist Review
After their mother's death, serious, responsible 17-year-old Beck Birsching sets out with her lively younger sister, Riley, to discover what kept calling their mother from Washington to the small desert town of Backravel, Arizona. Despite Ellery Birsching's extensive investigation, Beck still doesn't understand the lure, but a letter that arrives after Ellery's death becomes a catalyst for finally figuring it out. Meanwhile, the more Beck and Riley try to protect and help each other, the clearer it becomes that they need different and conflicting things. In eerie, dreamlike Backravel, Beck starts to dig, eventually coming face to face with her mother's discoveries and decisions. Flashbacks create an atmosphere of pulse-pounding suspense as readers alternate between Beck's mother slipping away and Backravel reeling Beck in, and a slow-burn sapphic romance is tender, well paced, and emotional. Gould provides an acknowledgment of the impossibility of staying still despite the inevitability of death and an exploration of the ways in which grief makes us vulnerable that is at once universal and highly specific. Imaginative and unexpectedly resonant.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A mysterious letter impels two sisters to investigate the circumstances behind their mother's death in this supernatural thrill ride by Gould (The Dead and the Dark). A few weeks after their mother's death, 17-year-old Beck Birsching and her 15-year-old sister Riley travel from Everett, Wash., to the unincorporated community of Backravel, Ariz., the scene of the unfinished investigation that consumed their reporter mother's final years. The siblings find that Backravel is an idyllic yet unnaturally empty town filled with a mishmash of gleaming new construction and rusting old military structures. Hoping to complete her mother's life's work, Beck obsessively delves into the mystery surrounding charismatic town leader Ricky Carnes, his daughter Avery, and the enigmatic treatment center looming over the streets. Beck is a smart and tough-as-nails heroine whose personal journal entries and careful observations drive the central mystery. Touching explorations of her relationships with her mother, Riley, and Avery bring the emotional core to the fore as Gould, via a close third-person perspective, carefully weaves together a powerful portrait of grief and healing that's equal parts unnerving and heartbreaking. Most characters cue as white. Ages 14--up. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A teen explores a strange town and a family mystery. Beck Birsching is 17 but already used to being the primary parent. After the divorce, her dad moved away from Everett, Washington, eventually landing in Texas, even as her mom's mental and physical health disintegrated dramatically before she died. Beck, left to run the house and take care of little sister Riley, needs to know why her mom, an investigative journalist, was so fixated on a small town in the Arizona desert and why she left a note saying, "Come and find me." The town, Backravel, is a welcoming yet sinister and isolated place resembling A Wrinkle in Time's Camazotz, where friendly but often confused locals speaking highly of the mysterious treatments that keep them healthy. When Riley starts coming down with a strange affliction that seems endemic to the place, Beck has to figure out what happened to her mom, how it's related to the mysteries of Backravel, and what to do about curt, enigmatic, and very attractive Avery Carnes, daughter of the town's charismatic but untrustworthy founder. Whether taken as straightforward science fiction or a meditation on trauma and healing, this is a sophisticated and entertaining read that is highly atmospheric. Characters seem to default to White. A creative exploration of loss and discovery. (Paranormal thriller. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
