I’m seriously brain-fogged right now and stringing thoughts together is hard, so here’s a slightly rambly and likely unhelpful and possibly slightly spoilery review (wow, sorry, I seem to be addicted to adverbs):

This was the most boring, beautifully described revolution I’ve ever read. I guess I’m mostly satisfied with the ending, so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time, but I’m weirdly wishing I had the kindle version so I could see just how many times Camille describes herself breaking out into a sweat. It seemed like A LOT. Also, WTF is this romance with Rémy? Is he her rebound guy? Or does she literally fall for every guy who shows a romantic interest in her (all two of them so far)? After Auguste ripped her heart out, maybe a week goes by before she starts fantasizing about kissing Rémy. I’ll give her a pass because she is SPECTACULARLY sheltered and probably far younger than her alleged 16 years (considering how fast baby Belles grow), which makes my eyebrows go up for entirely different reasons, but what does Rémy see in her? Did he get off on her treating him like dirt for the entire first book? Is that it?

Anyway, it was okay. The ending left the possibility for another sequel, but if it ever eventuates I’ll probably skip it so I can keep my headcanon that Tyra Banks’s Modelland is set in this book universe’s future when the whole concept of the Belles has been warped and perverted into the Intoxibellas. It’s the little things that give me joy.

I was highly entertained and I may have accidentally learned a few things, though I wouldn’t let a student use it as a reference. I suspect it’s a different experience in audio format, but for a print book it might be a case of too much of a good thing. I found my interest flagging in the last 100 pages.

It’s finally happened. I have read a Diane Setterfield book in which I liked the prose AND the plot AND the characters. The third time really is the charm, apparently. Persistence pays off! Sort of!

The story meanders like the titular river, seeming to flow slowly on the surface with hidden currents beneath. I enjoyed the fairy tale theme, but at the same time I found myself wishing that Setterfield had set out to subvert it instead of lean so hard into it. A whole lot of fairy tales and legends hinge on the suffering of women, and Once Upon a River is no exception. In fact, it plays most of the greatest hits, including but not limited to: rape, physical abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment, etc. Rita Sunday’s character journey had the most subversion potential, which is why the way she’s treated made me full-body cringe.

So anyway, yay for Setterfield with her beautiful prose finally writing a book with a story that interested me. Though I have to admit, after Bellman & Black that bar was really low.

It was probably a bad idea to read a crime novel set in a dying, drought-stricken, rural Aussie town when half my state is on fire and dozens of non-fictional towns are literally running out of water, but oh well. Can’t blame a four-year-old novel for being painfully relevant to current events. Depression practically oozed off the pages, and I couldn’t help thinking that if Kiewarra were real it would be cinders by now.

Depressing realism aside, I thought this was a well-written novel with a decent mystery and an interesting main character. To clarify, the present-day mystery was decent. The past mystery was a disappointing collection of violence-against-young-women tropes. Still, I’m interested enough to seek out more by Harper. I’m undecided if I want to read the sequel, though. Aaron Falk is an interesting character, but he definitely belongs to the class of crime novel protagonists in desperate need of a good therapist. I don’t know if I want to read a few hundred more pages of him not working through his abandonment issues. I hear Harper’s third book is a standalone and also pretty darn good. Maybe I’ll just skip to that one.

Once upon a time, this classic mystery about the disappearance of some schoolgirls and one of their teachers in 1900s Australia had a final chapter that explained the disappearances. Lindsay’s publisher told her to cut it because it ruined the novel’s mystique. And cutting the last chapter turned out to be a stroke of genius. Thanks in part to Lindsay’s enigmatic foreword in which she tells readers to decide for themselves whether the events in the book are fact or fiction, people absolutely obsessed over the mystery. They scoured old newspapers for reports of missing girls and pestered Lindsay for answers to the point where interviewers were asked to avoid the question. She eventually gave the final chapter to her agent with her permission to have it published after her death. Which was a good move on her part. It probably saved her from a ghastly amount of next-level pestering once the answers were out there.

You see, Lindsay’s agent did publish the final chapter after her death, and I have to agree with the publisher who cut it. It 100% ruins the story in a serious “I know it was the sixties, but what was this woman smoking?” kind of way. So yay for the publisher. Pat on the back.

On the other hand, not all of the clues that tied in with that what-was-she-smoking ending were edited out, making it obvious that the real ending was cut. The book didn’t feel open-ended so much as it felt unfinished. So once again I find myself finishing a classic and finding it an okay book while being much more fascinated and satisfied by the story behind the story.