Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Go as a River

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Go as a River by Shelley Read

8 reviews

rhiadav1's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Wow…….. just wow. I finished reading this book in tears. It is such a powerful story about overcoming loss and hardship. I loved the character development for Victoria - she is inspiring.

I highly highly recommend reading this book. I was hooked from the first page and didn’t put it down.

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seventhswan's review

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

2.75

I can appreciate that Go as a River is a beautifully descriptive, thematically complex book that a lot of people will really enjoy, but despite seeing this logically, I didn't particularly like it. The first half of the story was tediously slow - I enjoyed the second half a lot more, but they felt like different books to me. I also found that a lot of nuance, depth, and sympathy was given to characters like Victoria's father and brother, while more interesting characters like Wil and Ruby-Alice were deprived of agency and left quite one-dimensional. Their portrayals didn't match with what Victoria claimed to feel about them. And, honestly, I just didn't care about or connect with Victoria that much even though she was objectively going through many difficult things. Pretty much every other character seemed to have a more interesting perspective on what was going on.

The descriptions of the book's setting and the changing time periods were the highlights of this story for me, and I did feel emotional in places purely because of the amounts of suffering various characters went through. However, everything wrapped up so neatly and relied on so many improbable coincidences that it was just not a book that really worked for me.

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reading_ladies_blog's review

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emotional sad slow-paced

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

5.0

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alixcallender's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.75

I have great affection for Victoria, and I loved the slow, reflective, mournful pacing. But I do take issue with a few things:

- Far to many peach metaphors. We get it.
- Where is Wilson Moon’s actual personality?
- The near-end was overly fluffy and convenient. (Without giving anything away, I will just say that I am not convinced that Victoria could have imagined *that outcome* with such accuracy, nor do I believe that two people can glean such perfect and correct meaning from a pile of rocks.)

It was very much like Where the Crawdad’s Sing, so if you liked that story you’ll probably like this one too. It’s a poolside read. I read it quickly, and enjoyed it!

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astoriareader's review

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

SYNOPSIS:

It is the 1940s at a peach orchard in rural Colorado in a town called Iola. Victoria Nash is 17, and she is the woman of the house, as her mother & aunt died about 5 years ago. Due to gender roles of the time period, Victoria is expected to fill the gaps that her mother’s absence left (e.g., domestic duties, cleaning, cooking, etc). Without any choice of her own, she mindlessly fills the roles, and she becomes an adult as a child. She lives with her father, her uncle Og, and her troubled brother Seth.
One day, Victoria meets a handsome Indigenous man, Wilson Moon aka Wil. **Note: We never learn Wil’s community or nation of people, so I wish I could provide a better description.
From their first meeting, Victoria and Wil have a spark & chemistry. Sadly, Iola’s community is filled with racism, and Wil quickly becomes an outcast. He becomes a forbidden love for Victoria.
We follow Victoria’s life from 17 year old to an adult woman. The story spans about 20+ years.

MY THOUGHTS

I started this book on a Tuesday night, and I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. I woke up early the next morning to finish, so I ended up reading it all in 13-14 hours.
This is the author’s debut novel, and I am surprised, as the writing is top-notch. Read skillfully paints the landscape with words and weaves a beautiful story together. I loved how easy it was to visualize & empathize with the characters.
Impressive character development. Victoria is a likable, relatable, & capable main character. I felt emotionally connected to the lows and the highs of her story. Also, loved the choice of a diverse love for Victoria. When we meet Victoria, she is only 17, and we get to see her beautiful journey over a few decades.
Victoria’s story is a heavy read, as there are many heartbreaking moments. I found myself forgetting to breathe in a few parts. As we experience lows, we get to see the rise from the ashes & follow Victoria into adulthood.
Although the initial part of the book starts slow & sets the stage, it’s worth it. It’s a well-plotted book, and if you trust the process, it becomes an enthralling ride.
There were so many intriguing themes flushed out in this one: racism, discrimination, prejudice, self-esteem, self-acceptance, gender roles, women’s roles, friendship, loss, grief, motherhood, strength, perseverance, resilience, love, loneliness.
Coming-of-age story. Although, after finishing, I did look into some of the historical points mentioned by the author (such as the town of Iola), so in a way, this also would fall into a historical fiction category.

TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Ended up finishing in 13-14 hrs. Sweeping coming-of-age tale of Victoria in 1940s in rural Colorado. Masterfully written & plotted. Emotionally hard to read in some parts.

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raeerdna's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

heartbreaking. the cruel and sad face of reality breaking its point. i loved how real this story felt but still far away from life as today. even tho you can clearly see the mistakes from that period happening today as well, i was transported in that time and felt a soul crashing love and anger from it. cried, felt happy, relieved and angry all throughout it. never felt so familiar with a character but be almost nothing like it. that's what i loved the most about this book, it was beating like my heart is heard. oh, and all the detailed descriptions of nature and its beauty, that as well.

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amplify's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Excellent - reads quickly despite the lyrical prose and storyline. Really beautiful and so well told.

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shelfofunread's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.75

1948. Iola, Colorado. When Victoria ‘Torie’ Nash bumps into Wil Moon at the intersection between Main Street and North Laura, her life changes forever.

Seventeen-year-old Torie has been keeping house for her father, uncle and younger brother on the family peach farm ever since her mother died. It’s a quiet life – and not an entirely satisfactory one – but Torie never questions the rhythm of it until one fateful encounter with a stranger.

Wilson Moon is an enigma. He says he’s just a drifter: that he moves through life as a river and lives life as he chooses. But Wil is Native American and to others in the small town of Iola, that means trouble. Soon Torie isn’t the only one trying to find Wilson Moon. Her troubled brother, Seth, and his friends are after the reward that has been placed on Wil’s head. As Torie and Wil are drawn into a love affair as passionate as it is dangerous, tragedy shadows their footsteps. And when it arrives, Torie will need every ounce of her inner strength and courage to follow Wil’s advice and go as a river, wherever her life leads.

Go As A River, the debut novel from Coloradoan author Shelley Read, is as lyrical as it is is moving. It is clear that this novel has been written by an author who knows and loves the landscape of Colorado. I sometimes struggle with long paragraphs of description but the luscious rendition of the mountains, canyons, and creeks are an absolute delight to read, and Read’s depiction of small-time life means that Iola and its inhabitants leap off the page.

The characters are, for the most part, wonderfully drawn, especially Torie herself who comes of age and flourishes into a strong and independent woman as the novel progresses. I also found Seth, although abhorrent as a human being, to be a convincing antagonist, driven through life by envy and resentment. I was a tad less convinced by Wil who, at times, seems almost too good to be true but, as the novel is told from Torie’s perspective, it’s natural that she would see him as this ‘perfect’ figure given the events that take place and her own experiences up until that point in her life.

The novel deals with some very difficult issues so trigger warnings for racism/racial hatred/racial slurs, discrimination, alcohol abuse, PTSD, death of a parent, childbirth/birth trauma, abandonment, and mentions of violence, domestic violence and violent death. For the most part these issues are navigated sensitively although there were one or two areas where I felt the novel would have benefited from slightly more nuance. There’s a lot packed into 300 pages and although it is by no means a ‘pacy’ book – with lingering, lyrical descriptions throughout and a relatively sedate opening section – there were times when I felt the story needed a little more room to breath.

The need to move the plot forwards occasionally detracted from some of the larger themes that the novel engages with, such as the treatment of Native peoples, the effects of poverty in small-town rural America, and the impact that developments made in the name of ‘progress’ can have upon communities and individuals. This is a shame because Shelley Read writes so beautifully and clearly has a great passion for Colorado, it’s history, its landscape, and its people. I honestly can’t believe that this is a debut novel because the quality of the writing is exceptional.

As a coming-of-age novel, Go As A River is a compassionate and moving portrait of a young woman finding her place in the world. Richly descriptive and evocative, this is sure to appeal to fans of writers such as Kristen Hannah. Although I didn’t find all the characters as fully-drawn, the focus upon one women’s journey and her interactions with the world also has similarities to Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, and the lush descriptions of the landscape are sure to appeal to anyone who has loved Where the Crawdads Sing.

NB: This review also appears on my blog at https://theshelfofunreadbooks.wordpress.com as part of the Blog Tour for the book. My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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