Long Bright River

Long Bright River is a dark and atmospheric novel and while it has a very slow burn murder/suspense thread running through it, this is a story about sisters, the opioid crisis and the toll of addiction on generations of a family in Philadelphia.

My feelings were all over the place with this book. I enjoyed the descriptions of the darker side of Philadelphia and the interesting dynamics between the sisters but was surprised that it took so long for the story to get going. It had enough going on to keep me turning the pages but I always felt just on the edge of becoming invested in the story. I was also a little let down that the serial killer plot stayed in the background and how often the plot veered off on small tangents. But after the halfway mark, things start to pick up, pieces start falling into place and I became quite riveted.

Part of the reason for my initial struggle to connect with the story that I didn't like Mickey, the main character and sole narrator. I liked that she's a complicated character who made mistakes and has this deep and complicated relationship with her younger sister, Kacey but she felt really wooden with her lack of emotion and I struggled to connect with her. Since the book is told only through her eyes, we're limited to her POV and I think the story would have benefited from Kacey or Gee's points of view to round things out. And lastly, can I just say I'm not a fan of books that don't use quotation marks to show dialogue? What is with this trend?

In the end, I liked but didn't love this book. It is a dark and gritty slow burn story that has well-drawn characters and realistically and ruthlessly portrays the seriousness, destruction, and the personal toll that the opioid crisis has on individuals, families and communities. This is much more of a character-driven story than the suspense read I had anticipated, but if readers are patient, the tension builds leaving readers with twists leading them to a gripping and satisfying ending.

My Rating: 3.5 stars
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Suspense
Type and Source: eBook from public library
Publisher: Riverhead Books
First Published: January 7, 2020

Opening Lines: There's a body on the Gurney Street tracks. 

Female, age unclear, probably overdose, says the dispatcher.

Book Description from GoodReads: Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.