Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Berry Pickers

This book definitely dragged at times which is such a shame because I loved the overall concept and some of the passages had incredibly strong writing. The "twist" of the book is immediately revealed and the story takes the reader through what happened to the end that is hinted at in the beginning of the story. I loved this conceptually and I feel like it actually made dual POV work for me for once. Unfortunately several of the Joe chapters felt like they should've been cut or gone through another round of edits in my opinion. The Norma chapters were all strong and I loved her story, it hit home a lot for me as someone finding my biological family. Overall I will definitely read anything else Peters publishes but I will not be recommending this to everyone I meet.

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was a "read due to receiving it as an ALC from Libro.fm" situation. I had not heard of it prior to it being offered and I likely wouldn't have picked it up anyways. I do really appreciate that that program has really expanded some of my reading choices/horizons.

This is a dual-POV historical fiction/contemporary literature novel (early 1960s and present day). In 1962, a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, who finds himself unable to move on from her disappearance. Present day, in Maine, a girl named Norma is the only child of a well-off, but not easy-going (her father is distant and her mother is super overprotective) family. She is close to her aunt, and her aunt's partner, but they live too far away to help Norma through some of the more difficult moments. She is often troubled by recurring dreams that feel more like memory than imagination and, as she gets older, she realizes that there are things her family isn't telling her. As Joe never stops searching for his sister, Norma decides to try to uncover her family's secrets, their stories will collide with great emotional release.

This was a really solid read. From the very beginning, the trajectory of the story was clear; no real subtlety or attempt to obfuscate. I think I appreciated that. Since it was so obvious where it was going, trying to pretend the reader wouldn't see it likely would have felt a bit insulting. Instead then, we were able to go on the journeys the characters experienced alongside them, making them the highlight, as opposed to the plot. With that in mind, it would have been really easy for this to be a less emotionally impactful read, since one was able to prepare for the culmination over the entirety of the novel. In fact, I was kind of expecting that. And yet, it wasn't the case at all. When it came, the tentative rediscovery and reunion of the finale was *deeply* emotional. I found myself moved to tears a few times, because over my time with these characters, as they grew and developed and lived their lives, I got to really know them. So yea, the "twist" was almost obvious to the reader, but so smoothly written in its reveal to the characters that you felt like you were watching it happen for real, could imagine it playing out exactly like this if it was a true story. That authenticity of interactions - filled with feeling, but never expressed in an overdone way though the writing itself - made it all the more powerful. I was very impressed with that.

Thematically, there are a couple very strong messages Peters imparts. First, the highlighting of how much inequity, bias, and institutional racism allow the population in privilege to get away with, literally and logistically and morally and legally, truly unimaginable things. And there is often no real recourse for the oppressed. Like, a split second decision to literally steal a child, no matter what the mental state of the person perpetrating that kidnapping, is just... I don't know, it boggles the mind, in a devastating way, how easy it was to just get away with that choice. It should make you question all the institutions that didn't ask questions! And I appreciated the way the uglier sides of humanity/people were directly confronting, there is no softening due to intention, not when the impact was so catastrophic. Yes, there is recognition of a choice made in the throes of heartbreak, but never in a way that eases the despair and further heartbreak caused as a result. And my goodness, the way Peters illustrates the heartbreak/guilt of those left behind and the unexplained empty spaces for the one stolen away is enough to emotionally break you as a reader.

There are also some great head-on interrogations of the way that some types of families, based on look/position/income, are considered innately "better" than others. Peters shows a whole slew of faulty humanity in these pages, giving a clear comparative look at how each family, each person, has their own complications and difficulties, but also their own styles of comfort and support and love. And who has the right to decide which is preferred and would (or would have) provided a better/happier/safer home? No one. The accident of birth is just that, an accident. And then no one but the person themself should have the power to decide if/when that accident was the right fit or not. To take that choice away from someone...it's unthinkable. But she balances that too, with the conflicting loyalties of love and connection a person may face - asking who gets your silence or support, for example - when you have ties of family but perhaps don't agree? Those choices can be similarly impossible to make, though we are often asked to, in life. Nothing is easy, and Peters doesn't shy away from that hard truth.

Each of the characters in this novel is incredibly nuanced. There are no easy fillers or cookie-cutters. And that is the absolute highlight of this novel. Peters takes a single very wrong choice and builds it into something that, as each character is pulled into its orbit, creates a string of further reactions and decisions that just build in layer and complexity. And while you know that first choice was wrong, as every other character gets drawn in at different times and in different ways, their compounding choices make it so that, as a reader, you are caught in the tangled web to the point where you don't know how you'd have fixed it either. And that is literary magic.

I don't know if this reading experience was exactly what I wanted or expected from the novel. But I cannot deny that I was pulled in and deeply invested by the end, to an extent I didn't even realize (like I said, I cried multiple times and I truly hadn't been expecting to). I really respect that. And in the end, I was left with this stunning essence: that failings are part of who we are as human, and we all deserve grace and space and the chance to live for ourselves, with full knowledge of who we are and the power to choose how we want our life to look. And that is something worth being left with.

“It’s funny what you remember when something goes wrong.”

“We hollered Ruthie’s name so much that the trees knew it by heart.”

“People will be someone other than themselves if they have people who rely on them.”

“You never know what your last words to someone are going to be, and it’s hard to reconcile it when the deed is done and the person is gone.”

"Marriage is a funny thing. There are so many people in the world, and you decide to commit the rest of your life, the rest of your emotional energy, to just one. You assume that the mysterious connection that ties you to one another will hold. A connection that can't be trusted, one that probably manifests in that same mystical space where stories come from. A place that allows you to suspend your disbelief. Marriage assumes that you will bend and twist and adjust to one another. It assumes that your desires will forever be interconnected by the placement of a piece of gold around a finger. For many people this is true. I envy those people who can dig deep and find that thing that originally allowed them to believe they could spend their entire lives [together]."

“Some wounds cannot be healed. Some wounds never close, never scar. But the further away from the injury, the easier it became to smile.”

“Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.”

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figglefarm's review against another edition

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4.5

Content Warnings

books_tea_blanket's review

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book deals with grief, some of what was but mainly what could have been. The characters’ stories are often sad as they find themselves, and I found myself wishing that their lives had been different. But I don’t put the blame on the author for writing their stories this way, but on the people and their choices in the book, as well as problems with society, for shaping the characters’ stories.

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