Saturday, December 28, 2013

The Riverman by Aaron Starmer

Alistair is good at keeping secrets.  Fiona wants someone to write her memoirs but doesn't want the truth getting out now, so she chooses Alistair to pen it.  Fiona either has a really good imagination or she's crazy...

Macmillan Children's Publishing Group and Net Galley allowed me to download and read an ebook of this story (thank you).  It will be published March 18th, so make a note to check it out then.

This is a very strange story.  I kept trying to pick out the "bones" of the story and figure out what point the author was trying to make.  I'm still not sure what he was trying to accomplish.

Alistair has a very good friend named Charlie.  Charlie plays too many video games but he's always around and they have a good time together.  When Fiona approaches him and he starts spending time with her, Charlie doesn't like it.

Fiona has created her own little world.  It's an odd place where strange things happen and she swears she travels to it through a water passage down in the basement where the boiler is.  Alistair thinks it's a fantasy but then he begins to wonder.  There's such detail.  Fiona's home life is weird; maybe it's related to something happening there.

This story is for older readers.  There are cuss words, violence, sexual innuendo, dysfunctional families, and murder involved.  

At the end, I had too many questions.  There were quite a few issues unresolved.  It was suggested that Alistair had visited Fiona's world but it doesn't tell you why or what happened.  There were other revelations that just got left hanging.  I found myself unsatisfied by the read and wondering what I missed.  It could just be it wasn't my type of book.  I like things ticked and tied.

Tell you what, you read it and see what you think and then let me know.  Maybe with more than one reader, the fog will clear up.

Happy reading.

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