The Roanoke Girls, by Amy Engel
Publication date: 10 August 2017
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Synopsis:
The girls of the Roanoke family – beautiful, rich, mysterious – seem to have it all. But there’s a dark truth about them that’s never spoken. Either the girls run away… or they die.
Lane is one of the lucky ones. When she was fifteen, over one long, hot summer at her grandparents’ estate in rural Kansas, she found out what it really means to be a Roanoke girl. Lane ran, far and fast. Until eleven years later, when her cousin Allegra goes missing – and Lane has no choice but to go back.
She is a Roanoke girl. Is she strong enough to escape a second time?
My thoughts:
4 stars out of 5
‘The Roanoke Girls’ is narrated by Lane, a girl who at 16 moves into her grandparents’ home after her mother’s death. She develops a strong friendship with her cousin Allegra, but something feels off: the walls are lined with pictures of the other Roanoke girls – cousins and aunts – but they’re all either ‘gone or dead’.
Ten years later, her grandfather calls with an emergency, and Lane returns to Roanoke for the first time since that dramatic summer.
The narrative flits between Lane’s teenage summer, the present, and little snippets of the other Roanoke girls’ stories, mainly set around smalltown Kansas. Its an atmospheric and powerful read, with a handful of intriguing mysteries that really push the story along.
The characters are well drawn and fascinating, with complex backgrounds and motivations, which is excellent. However, the characters whose motivations are hardest to understand are never fully explored – we don’t find out why Yates does the things he does, and we never fully understand why the Roanoke girls don’t tell anyone (particularly Allegra) and that’s an issue for me.
I think the writer attempts to explain, but without getting into the head of a character like Yates it’s pretty difficult to understand him.
Overall, a great read which would appeal to fans of ‘The Virgin Suicides’ by Jeffrey Eugenides and ‘The Last Days of Summer’ by Vanessa Walters.