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3.3 AVERAGE
3.3 AVERAGE
⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5
Disclaimer: [b:Grist Mill Road|33898903|Grist Mill Road|Christopher J. Yates|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498858389s/33898903.jpg|54863823] starts out with a couple of very disturbing scenes, and this book definitely isn't for the faint of heart.
The book is told from multiple viewpoints (which I love!); mostly Patrick (also known as Patch when he is younger), Hannah, and towards the end Matthew. On one hand I really liked getting all sides of the stories, but I ended up skimming a bit of Matthew - more on that later. The book jumps between the past - 1982 - and present time which is New York in 2008. The book is also broken into 3 parts which I thought was a good move for the storyline.
Of the characters I was really surprised that Hannah ended up being so funny. She had a very dry wit which I loved in her viewpoints. Other than that though, I really just could not connect with any of the characters, even when some pretty sh**ty stuff was going down. I don't condone anything that happened, but the characters just didn't make that big of an impact on me. And let me tell you, these characters needed a whole lot of God's grace!
I skimmed some of the scenes in Matthew's point of view with Pete; too much talking about geology, glaciers, etc. and I thought it was terribly boring. If you love nature or are interested in things like that, you may enjoy these parts. I felt like a lot of this book was just plain slow, and it went into great detail. One nice thing was it gave you quite the backstory on the characters and you don't find out exactly what happened that fateful day in 1982 until the very end.
Another issue I had with this book is that there are no quotation marks when characters are speaking which sometimes made it a little confusing. I just prefer my books to have quotation marks during dialog I guess.
Final Thought: A lot of people really enjoyed this book, so I suggest taking a look for yourself. Overall I just found the book a little too slow (although I read it fairly quickly), a little too verbose in spots, and I couldn't find the characters terribly relatable. It is still a very well written book though, and very detailed (you can tell the author did a lot of research and was very knowledgeable). I will also be going back to read [b:Black Chalk|23395105|Black Chalk|Christopher J. Yates|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430317656s/23395105.jpg|23984793] to see if I have better overall feelings about that one. This author just might not be a good fit for me as I was pretty underwhelmed by this one.
*This title was published on 09 Jan 2018*
Disclaimer: [b:Grist Mill Road|33898903|Grist Mill Road|Christopher J. Yates|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498858389s/33898903.jpg|54863823] starts out with a couple of very disturbing scenes, and this book definitely isn't for the faint of heart.
The book is told from multiple viewpoints (which I love!); mostly Patrick (also known as Patch when he is younger), Hannah, and towards the end Matthew. On one hand I really liked getting all sides of the stories, but I ended up skimming a bit of Matthew - more on that later. The book jumps between the past - 1982 - and present time which is New York in 2008. The book is also broken into 3 parts which I thought was a good move for the storyline.
Of the characters I was really surprised that Hannah ended up being so funny. She had a very dry wit which I loved in her viewpoints. Other than that though, I really just could not connect with any of the characters, even when some pretty sh**ty stuff was going down. I don't condone anything that happened, but the characters just didn't make that big of an impact on me. And let me tell you, these characters needed a whole lot of God's grace!
I skimmed some of the scenes in Matthew's point of view with Pete; too much talking about geology, glaciers, etc. and I thought it was terribly boring. If you love nature or are interested in things like that, you may enjoy these parts. I felt like a lot of this book was just plain slow, and it went into great detail. One nice thing was it gave you quite the backstory on the characters and you don't find out exactly what happened that fateful day in 1982 until the very end.
Another issue I had with this book is that there are no quotation marks when characters are speaking which sometimes made it a little confusing. I just prefer my books to have quotation marks during dialog I guess.
Final Thought: A lot of people really enjoyed this book, so I suggest taking a look for yourself. Overall I just found the book a little too slow (although I read it fairly quickly), a little too verbose in spots, and I couldn't find the characters terribly relatable. It is still a very well written book though, and very detailed (you can tell the author did a lot of research and was very knowledgeable). I will also be going back to read [b:Black Chalk|23395105|Black Chalk|Christopher J. Yates|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430317656s/23395105.jpg|23984793] to see if I have better overall feelings about that one. This author just might not be a good fit for me as I was pretty underwhelmed by this one.
*This title was published on 09 Jan 2018*
I won this book on Goodreads as an ARC. First time, but definitely not the last time, I have read anything by this author.
Loved how the story was told a little at a time from multiple points of view!
Suspenseful and kept my attention all the way through. Good job!!
Loved how the story was told a little at a time from multiple points of view!
Suspenseful and kept my attention all the way through. Good job!!
Great read! So happy and feeling great that I was granted an advanced readers copy of this book coming out the beginning of January 2018.
Back shortly for more of a review.
Back shortly for more of a review.
It’s August of 1982, three friends are in the woods, a crime is committed, binding them forever. It’s now 26 years later in 2008, and the three friends are brought back together. What I was expecting to be a bit of a more fast-paced thriller, ended up being more about how the events of one night can vary drastically based on your point of view. It’s also the story of the coming of age of a boy living in upstate New York in the early eighties.
The book alternates between unveiling the events that lead up to that night in 1982, and 2008 when the three friends are brought back together. I really like books that go back and forth in time, I think it keeps the suspense building, and that was definitely accomplished in this book.
I thought this was a very intriguing read, it kept me interested the entire time, but I just felt like something was off/disjointed throughout parts of the book. If you’ve read it, feel free to DM on Instagram (acaffeinatedbibliophile) to chat! 3.5/5 stars
The book alternates between unveiling the events that lead up to that night in 1982, and 2008 when the three friends are brought back together. I really like books that go back and forth in time, I think it keeps the suspense building, and that was definitely accomplished in this book.
I thought this was a very intriguing read, it kept me interested the entire time, but I just felt like something was off/disjointed throughout parts of the book. If you’ve read it, feel free to DM on Instagram (acaffeinatedbibliophile) to chat! 3.5/5 stars
This was the perfect slow-burn thoughtful thriller to cleanse my palate from all the trashy, shallow YA I've been absorbing for classes lately. It does get tiresome to read endless paper-thin romances built around impossibly predictable storylines. I love how Yates starts with a grotesque scene to get the horror out of the way and then takes his time building up your emotional connections and sympathies for the main characters. In the novel itself, one of the characters mentions a story being a kaleidoscope rather than a two way lens, but Yates' novel made me think of a river--constantly shifting, driving its own path, and never the same looking back. I really enjoyed this and will probably pick up Black Chalk in the very near future.
Grist Mill Road is a well-written literary suspense novel. Three teenagers in the early 1980's are involved in a horrific event. Fast forward approximately 25 years later and two are married and one resurfaces. Each one holds secrets about the event which are revealed through their back stories. I found this extremely readable and I did enjoy learning each character's story and the secrets they kept from each other. Unfortunately, then ending just seemed so pointless to me. While I believe I understand what I was meant to feel, I just didn't experience that. I can see why many people give this 5 *s. If I had felt something at the end, I believe I would have ranked it higher. It just simply missed it for me, but had great potential along the way.
2.5 stars. I just... did not like this that much. I should have known, looking at the first few lines in the Goodreads synoposis: "Twenty-six years ago Hannah had her eye shot out. Now she wants justice. But is she blind to the truth?" Although this synopsis promised characters "so absorbing that readers are immediately gripped," I never found that to be the truth. The characters were forgettable and the plot just kind of weird. The author seemed to force a lot of connections that didn't make sense (or weren't interesting), character actions that were just mental, and character depth that never really got meaningful. A well-written thriller, this is not.
I love a gripping thriller like this one.
It had just the right amount of mystery to keep me entertained.
It had just the right amount of mystery to keep me entertained.
This book fell flat for me. I would rate it at 3 1/2 stars. The narrative went from past to present time, told from three different perspectives. I thought the book was slow in the beginning, with the best part being in the middle of the book. The ending was very deescalating for me. The ending was told in a rushed, very confusing manner. There was a chapter at the very end that felt completely unnecessary. This was a mediocre thriller at best.