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I want to thank NetGalley and Post Hill Press for the opportunity to read and review Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce.
MY REVIEW
I saw the tropical cover, investigated further and saw it takes place in Florida, and it was based on a true crime, what more could I ask for?
The book starts out slow and I am wondering how the two storylines will come together.
Author Deborah Goodrich Royce mother’s best friend was murdered. In Reef Road, we have a writer whose mother’s best friend was murdered and she never recovered from it. Her life was wrapped around her mother’s inability to move on. We, also, have a woman whose husband and two children disappear. These two points of view come together takes place during the pandemic lockdown. How convenient.
Two boys, on a beach where they aren’t supposed to be, don’t even notice the woman sitting alone, when they find a hand.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do with this?”
Isn’t that what you would expect coming out of their mouth? And, the mystery begins.
Not only do we have the pandemic, murder, a missing husband and kids, we also have 9.11. There is so much going on and the flip flopping back and forth, made it seem like I was reading two books at once, was confusing for me. It does come together in a weird way in the second half of the book and that is what saves it for me. By then, I was devouring the pages. I had to know how Deborah Goodrich Royce would wrap up Reef Road.
I enjoyed the story and would read more of Deborah Goodrich Royce’s work.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce.
GOODREADS BLURB
When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.
“Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies—the lies that lead to an even deeper—and more devastating—truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and exposé. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma.” —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.
In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.
ABOUT DEBORAH GOODRICH ROYCE (from Amazon)
Deborah Goodrich Royce’s thrillers examine puzzles of identity. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist in 2021 and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes, BookRiot, and Good Morning America’s “best of” lists in 2019. Her newest, Reef Road, will be published on January 10, 2023.
She began as an actress on All My Children and in multiple films before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films, developing Emma and early versions of Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time.
With her husband, Chuck, Deborah restored the Avon Theatre, Ocean House Hotel, Deer Mountain Inn, United Theatre, Savoy Bookstore, and numerous Main Street revitalization projects in Rhode Island and the Catskills.
She serves on the governing and advisory boards of the American Film Institute, Greenwich International Film Festival, New York Botanical Garden, Greenwich Historical Society, the Preservation Society of Newport, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, and the PRASAD Project.
Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Lake Erie College.
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