Reviews with content warning for Violence - The First Day of Spring

This was pitched to me as a thriller, and while there was tension in this story, I'd say that this is more of a very dark, very sad character study. Gillian Flynn-esque in the sense that it grapples with themes of childhood trauma/abuse and contemplation of motherhood but with timelines not quite so pressing or urgent. It would have been very easy for Tucker to have made Chrissie out to be an inscrutable monster, but while her actions are hideous, she is still a child - pitiable, at times exasperating or ridiculous, but replete with the kind of logic and understanding of the world that fills only those who are still new to life. As for Julia, for a while I couldn't figure out if having and caring (so deeply) for Molly stemmed from a sense of ingrained selfishness or newly developed selflessness, until I figured that it made more sense for the answer to be "both," no clean lines and no clear-cut answer.

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was definitely a heavy hitter of a book particularly with its themes and its take on the topic of nature vs nurture with the book taking a stance on the latter. The start of the book really took me along time to get through which was probably not helped by other factors such as reading other books at the time as well as having exams going on in school that limited my reading time particularly of this book however when I got to the latter half of this book it truly made up for the slow and somewhat boring start of the book, at that point I was fully engrossed in what was going on in a way that I hadn't been when I was reading the first half or so.

The premise of this book is really unique/original in not only having the book be from the killer's perspective but also having said killer be a child is very fascinating aa it opens for many discussions on the topic of nature vs nurture and in this case whether 8-year old Chrissie's murder of fellow child Steven was something that she was simply born to do or whether it was her surrounding environment such as a lack of attention, care (Both emotional and physical), and food at home that shaped her into a child capable of such a crime. It was really fascinating to read through especially as you see it through Chrissie's perspective as one part of the two perspectives, we follow throughout this book with the other being Julia, Chrissie grown up with a new identity and a daughter of her own named Molly who she fights to ensure does not end up like her.

Chrissie's perspective is purposely childlike and shows the harsh realities of life and how they are received by a child such as thinking that death is not permanent and not fully understanding the consequences of her actions and how they affected other until much later in her life. It's interesting to read through as while we get reasoning as to what drives Chrissie to do these things such as an emotionally abusive and toxic household, Chrissie is never absolved of her crimes and is fairly judged for the horrible things she did. Meanwhile, Julia is left picking up the pieces of her past actions as a new woman with a daughter who she fears will turn out just like her, I will admit that at the start of Julia's storyline, it was pretty boring to me as it was very exposition heavy as to how she got to this place in her life but after the exposition is placed on the backburner, the story becomes a lot more intriguing and we get to see Chrissie's growth as Julia such as when she recognises how good of a friend Linda was to her despite how horrible she was to Linda as a means of getting power in a life where it was scarcely at her disposal.

My only issues with the book is that the start is quite slow and does feel like it's being done simply to set up the second half and the main events of the book, but it does pay off eventually just acts as a potential discouragement to continue on if the reader finds it too boring. Also, on the blurb it states that there is a storyline featuring Julia being afraid to answer phone calls that come from someone who knows her past and going in I assumed that this would be a driving factor of conflict, yet this ends quite anticlimactically and so too does other parts of the book which could affect some reading experiences but i think the handling of the books themes more than make up for it.

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