★★☆☆☆
Long Bright River tells the the tale of a dysfunctional relationship between two sisters lost in the world of opioid addiction and sex work. Throughout Long Bright River, Liz Moore paints a real and intense picture of what addiction and poverty can do, even to the closest of families.
Told in alternating timelines, we are introduced to Mickey and Kacey, two young girls who have lost both parents to the opioid epidemic and are forced to live with their grandmother, Gee. Although Gee loves her granddaughters, the resentment that she has towards raising them leads both girls to find solace in other places. Mickey finds her way by attending an after school program run by the local police department. While there, she finds a companion in a young officer working the camp. Kasey finds her companionship in other troubled teens who lead her down a road she may never be able to come back from.
Fast forward to the girls' early 30's, and now Mickey is a police officer with a young son. Kacey is a sex worker and an addict. During her shifts, Mickey patrols the areas where Kacey works, because despite not speaking in close to five years, Mickey likes to keep an eye on her. Soon, Mickey realizes that she hasn't seen her sister out on the streets in quite some time and sex workers have started to turn up dead from strangulation. Is Kacey alive? Who is behind the murders and will these sisters survive?
I'll start by saying that Long Bright River is outside of my comfort zone in terms of genre. I'm more of a YA and romance reader, but I figured with this blog I should branch out. Unfortunately, branching out did not serve me well. Long Bright River was a SLOW burn and by slow, I mean SLOW. The alternating timelines caused the plot to be drawn out much longer than it needed to be and I had to walk away a couple of times because I was just extremely bored. The small twists that start to pop up did make the last half more enjoyable but I didn't feel myself being sucked in due to the lack of intensity overall. The characters are also fairly stiff and don't offer much in terms of complexity.
In the end, I was left unsettled and unsatisfied. On to the next one!
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