As many of you may know, if my YouTube Channel is just for my music reviews, I do like to use this side blog to talk and write about other things outside of the music realm. And today I would like to review a book from an author that I discovered few years ago : 'The Roanoke Girls' by Amy Engel.
"Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die."
Thanks to a friend few years ago,I gave in into reading 'The Book of Ivy' . At first I was not the most enthusiastic because YA (=Young Adult) literature was never a genre I felt compelled to get into. Most of the books I read were either Haruki Murakami books or classics like Dracula or Wuthering Heights. And yet, when I started this book and then it's follow up ('The Revolution of Ivy') I was compelled to finish both as fast as I could, because I simply couldn't put my kindle down. I was stuck into this universe and did not want to leave it.
Amy Engel's writing has a way to suck you into the worlds she creates that feels warm and familiar. Almost from the very first lines, the characters and worlds build through these novels feel as if those characters were friends of yours, and through my read , I felt as if I knew Ivy and Lane in an intimate way that never felt vicious or perverted, but more like I was going along for the ride with people close to me no matter how dreadful the ride would get.
Being a YA serie, Ivy's journey was mostly 'contained' because the audience aimed at was pretty much young adults like me, and thus I always felt like the books could have gone beyond and be a more gruesome in their own ways. When I read those two books, I could feel that Amy had so much more to offer,especially on her story telling and how mature it could get. 'The Revolution of Ivy' gave some hints to how raw and violent Amy's writing could get, but compare to 'The Roanoke Girls', this was child play.
'The Roanoke Girls' sucked in me right from the start. Put mostly through the main character Lane Roanoke's perspective, you get to unveil chapter by chapter, slowly and intimately the mystery that surrounds the family that is the Roanokes. You do put some of the pieces of the puzzle together when it is needed , but it always comes organically and nothing felt too on on the nose. If anything,the more I knew,the more I found myself disturbingly wanting to keep on reading this twisted story.
Because yes, this book has some twisted themes to itself. Which reminds me of something someone reviewing the book wrote as part of their review : 'I hope the story isn't based on the author's own personal life'. Thinking back to this comment makes me realize how amazing of a story teller Amy Engel is. Because yes the story from The Roanoke Girls is buried in a fictional world that feels like it might have happened at some point to some people's lives out there in the real world, and it's almost terrifying to think that. But that's what I love about Amy: she does not compromise and no matter how disturbing the story gets, you can only applaud the guts it takes to write a story like The Roanoke Girls, especially coming from a female author and it only encourages me to not compromise in my own writing as well.
I loved The Roanoke Girls, a twisted, f*cked up story that keeps on pulling you in it no matter how messed up things get, but the characters are so compelling and the mystery surrounding the novel is one that kept me reading all day. It's definitively not a book Hollywood will try to adapt into a movie and thank god for that. It's a ★★★★★ for me.
♦ Buy The Roanoke Girls : ♦
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