literary fiction | Novel Therapy

(Available August, 2020)

Thanks to Becky Mandelbaum, Simon & Schuster, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel. In The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals, it’s post-election 2016, and Ariel returns to rural western Kansas when she finds out that her mother’s animal sanctuary has been burned in a hate crime.

This is a solid debut novel and it succeeds in many ways. Mandelbaum’s writing is quite good. I would recommend this novel to fans of literary fiction and especially to animal lovers. I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

While I enjoyed this novel, a couple of things kept me from loving it. First, I thought the political angle was a bit too heavy-handed (and I say that as someone who agrees with the political point of view expressed by the characters). Second, I really wanted to like the mother and the daughter — they are the emotional core of the book — but I found them both to be selfish and destructive, so much so that it was hard to root for them or empathize with them. So, while I was engaged in this book and was very interested to see how it would end, these shortcomings kept me from giving book a higher rating.

Long, Bright River, by Liz Moore

In Philadelphia, amidst the ravages of the opioid epidemic, police officer Mickey searches for her addicted sister, Kacey, who has gone missing. Has Kacey finally fallen prey to her addiction? Or is she a victim of a killer who is targeting vulnerable women in the area? Mickey endeavors to find her, while trying to keep her own life from spinning out of control.

It’s hard for me to categorize this book because while it has elements of a police procedural and of a slow-burn mystery/thriller, it’s such a smart, emotionally resonant novel that it’s more of a literary novel (that happens to be a page turner). I loved this novel, though it was at times hard to read, given the stark depiction of the opioid epidemic. Liz Moore’s writing is exceptional. Highly recommend!