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camilleisreading24 's review for:
The Current
by Tim Johnston
Back in fall 2017, I read and really liked [b:Descent|20312459|Descent|Tim Johnston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410170967l/20312459._SX50_.jpg|28147218]. The Current was even better.
The writing in this book is phenomenal. There are beautiful sentences that unspool to heartbreaking conclusions. There is a palpable feeling of the trauma the community has suffered, but always there is an undercurrent (hah) of hope. All of the characters are fully realized. This is one of those books where there are multiple perspectives (which I love) but you have to figure out at the start of the chapter whose head you're in. I had no trouble doing so, or even figuring out when a time jump had occurred, which tells me this book is the work of a master. At 400 pages, this isn't a short book, but since it is a thriller I finished it pretty quickly. I would LOVE to see this as a gritty miniseries on AMC or HBO.
Synopsis (some spoilers from the first 50 pages or so): Audrey's father is dying. She asks her friend Caroline to lend her bus fare so she can go home to her small Minnesota town and be with him. Caroline offers instead to drive her friend there, and the two set off from their college town in the dead of winter. They stop at a gas station in Iowa late that night and are attacked by two men. Though they escape (Caroline pepper sprayed one of the men), in their haste to get on the road they skid off the side and land in an embankment. Another car comes up behind them and taps their car into the river, where Caroline drowns and Audrey is injured. While recovering in the hospital and then later at home, Audrey learns that the news about what happened to her and Caroline is awakening old suspicions about another girl who died in that river 10 years ago. Gordon Burke's daughter Holly died a decade ago and he never forgave Audrey's father, who was the sheriff at that time, for not solving the case. Danny, the teenager that the cops pegged as the likely suspect, was the son of Gordon's friend and business partner. Though the cops didn't have the evidence to charge Danny, Gordon always believed that his friend's son killed his daughter. Now, as Audrey recovers and grieves the loss of her best friend, she starts putting her energy into solving that other mystery from back then.
The writing in this book is phenomenal. There are beautiful sentences that unspool to heartbreaking conclusions. There is a palpable feeling of the trauma the community has suffered, but always there is an undercurrent (hah) of hope. All of the characters are fully realized. This is one of those books where there are multiple perspectives (which I love) but you have to figure out at the start of the chapter whose head you're in. I had no trouble doing so, or even figuring out when a time jump had occurred, which tells me this book is the work of a master. At 400 pages, this isn't a short book, but since it is a thriller I finished it pretty quickly. I would LOVE to see this as a gritty miniseries on AMC or HBO.
Synopsis (some spoilers from the first 50 pages or so): Audrey's father is dying. She asks her friend Caroline to lend her bus fare so she can go home to her small Minnesota town and be with him. Caroline offers instead to drive her friend there, and the two set off from their college town in the dead of winter. They stop at a gas station in Iowa late that night and are attacked by two men. Though they escape (Caroline pepper sprayed one of the men), in their haste to get on the road they skid off the side and land in an embankment. Another car comes up behind them and taps their car into the river, where Caroline drowns and Audrey is injured. While recovering in the hospital and then later at home, Audrey learns that the news about what happened to her and Caroline is awakening old suspicions about another girl who died in that river 10 years ago. Gordon Burke's daughter Holly died a decade ago and he never forgave Audrey's father, who was the sheriff at that time, for not solving the case. Danny, the teenager that the cops pegged as the likely suspect, was the son of Gordon's friend and business partner. Though the cops didn't have the evidence to charge Danny, Gordon always believed that his friend's son killed his daughter. Now, as Audrey recovers and grieves the loss of her best friend, she starts putting her energy into solving that other mystery from back then.