Book Review: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
Publisher: Broadway Books
Paperback Release Date: December 5, 2017
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

After her mother’s suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother’s mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran…fast and far away.
 
Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.
 
As it weaves between Lane’s first Roanoke summer and her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

The Roanoke Girls is the story of the Roanoke family, who have lived on a farm in the fictional town of Osage Flats for generations. Lane’s mother Camille, the daughter of patriarch Yates, ran away from the farm when she was just a teenager and never went back. When Lane is sixteen, her mother kills herself and she is sent to live on the family farm with her grandparents, who she’s never met. She forms a fast friendship with her cousin Allegra and learns that she has several relatives known as the Roanoke Girls. None of them live on the farm though because, as Allegra explains, Roanoke Girls, they either run or they die.

Lane herself left the farm after living there for just one summer and stayed away for years. One day, her grandfather, Yates, calls her out of the blue and tells her that Allegra has gone missing. Can she please come home and help find her? Surprisingly, Lane does. Upon arrival, she is immediately confronted with the horrible – and I mean truly horrible – secret that the people who still live on the farm harbor.

Roanoke Girls was my book club’s February selection. We chose it because the author is from Kansas City and we all live in or nearby the City. A lot of us grew up in rural Kansas and could relate to the setting. Some of our members are social workers and have dealt with people involved in the same terrible secret as the people in the book. Some of us thought it was so horrifying that it couldn’t have been based in reality but they told us that unfortunately, it was.

We were split on our opinions of Roanoke Girls. Some of us thought it was well-written and suspenseful. Others of us, myself included, thought that the story had some plot devices that were a little too convenient and that the writing wasn’t very good. Some of the same adjectives and idioms were used over and over. And Lane’s reaction to every little thing was SO DRAMATIC. Almost everything someone said to her rocked her to her core or some such.

The “real” reviews I read, from newspapers and whatnot gave this book mixed reviews. However, most of the reviews on Amazon and from other bloggers were positive. I think there is an audience for Roanoke Girls, it’s just not me.