Scan barcode
celtic67's review against another edition
4.0
Billed as Part Horror, part psychological thriller, I was intrigued to find out what I thought of it. I found myself being slowly but surely being drawn into this, at times,bleak tale.
Having never read anything by J. Robert Lennon before, the thought of a new author and the blurb got the better of my curiosity and I dived in.
The book starts with a couple and their daughter fleeing their home. Why is never fully explained. They are subsequently murdered and their daughter is found later by a neighbour and vanishes from the tale'
The murder is never solved and the locals believe the house cursed.
After years of desolation the house is inhabited again by Karl, Eleanor and their daughter Irina. Leaving New York presumably for a new start
And this is where the real story begins. The story of the supposed curse: but also the story of their lives and others whom the trajectory of their lives bring them into contact with.
It is a story of selfishness and cruelty
Karl is a selfish and immature person. Totally unsuited to be a father and unable to give up his philandering ways.
Elanor also seems trapped in a marriage of convenience and not of love. Though she seems to be trying to make it work.
And Irina the daughter, tired of being the brunt of her parents arguments and the weapon they use against each other: retreats into her own world of the imagination and internet.
There is also an eerie presence known as the Observer.Who or what it is is for each reader to make up their own mind.
Thank to Serpents Tail and Lovereading for the ARC.
Having never read anything by J. Robert Lennon before, the thought of a new author and the blurb got the better of my curiosity and I dived in.
The book starts with a couple and their daughter fleeing their home. Why is never fully explained. They are subsequently murdered and their daughter is found later by a neighbour and vanishes from the tale'
The murder is never solved and the locals believe the house cursed.
After years of desolation the house is inhabited again by Karl, Eleanor and their daughter Irina. Leaving New York presumably for a new start
And this is where the real story begins. The story of the supposed curse: but also the story of their lives and others whom the trajectory of their lives bring them into contact with.
It is a story of selfishness and cruelty
Karl is a selfish and immature person. Totally unsuited to be a father and unable to give up his philandering ways.
Elanor also seems trapped in a marriage of convenience and not of love. Though she seems to be trying to make it work.
And Irina the daughter, tired of being the brunt of her parents arguments and the weapon they use against each other: retreats into her own world of the imagination and internet.
There is also an eerie presence known as the Observer.Who or what it is is for each reader to make up their own mind.
Thank to Serpents Tail and Lovereading for the ARC.
erikbergstrom's review against another edition
Story was going nowhere. Too much attention paid on unlikeable characters in stalled situations. No sense of any conflict or antagonist outside of a gimmicky "observer".
cmariej09's review against another edition
2.0
What to think when you love a story premise but HATE every character?
chillcox15's review against another edition
3.0
A decent literary thriller -- literary here as distinguished by having an interest in the interiority of the characters and painting them with more than what's required of the plot, which Broken River does well enough. That being said, kinda bare bones as far as intrigue-- not quite conventionally thrilling enough, and not quite weird enough either. I don't think that Lennon uses the concept of The Observer in the best way, which would have set Broken River up to be a pretty good twist on the thriller but instead reads as narratively overbearing and thematically scant
jdintr's review against another edition
4.0
I don't often read in the thriller/mystery genre, but Lennon's book was worth the mental foray for me.
At its base is a family that moves into a house that was the site of a double murder more than a decade previously. As the daughter and the mother--an author in her own right--separately explore the unsolved case and put forward their ideas, the ever-watching criminals are drawn back to Broken River and the house that is the scene of the crime.
What Lennon does is to provide multiple insights into the plot of the book, flitting the reader's gaze from the eyes of Irina, the daughter, to Elinor (her mother), to the father, his lover, a teenaged girl named Sam, and to "the Other," a ghostly omniscient voice that fills in the gaps to the background of the house.
The tale Lennon tells isn't so clever--the final scene was over so quickly--but the way he tells it held my interest and made the book enjoyable for me.
At its base is a family that moves into a house that was the site of a double murder more than a decade previously. As the daughter and the mother--an author in her own right--separately explore the unsolved case and put forward their ideas, the ever-watching criminals are drawn back to Broken River and the house that is the scene of the crime.
What Lennon does is to provide multiple insights into the plot of the book, flitting the reader's gaze from the eyes of Irina, the daughter, to Elinor (her mother), to the father, his lover, a teenaged girl named Sam, and to "the Other," a ghostly omniscient voice that fills in the gaps to the background of the house.
The tale Lennon tells isn't so clever--the final scene was over so quickly--but the way he tells it held my interest and made the book enjoyable for me.
domdevine's review against another edition
2.0
did not finish. Made it to page 111. I tried but couldn't love any of the characters.
sjfarrell's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.25
bunnieslikediamonds's review against another edition
5.0
J. Robert Lennon is one of those authors whose books I read without checking out a single review first. Always unpredictable, interesting, never boring. Broken River is hypnotic and unsettling, brilliantly written, with well-developed characters. After a string of not so great reads this was immensely refreshing.