Winter Flower - Charles Sheehan-Miles - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Charles Sheehan-Miles

GENRE: Contemporary Mystery

PUBLICATION DATE: June 4, 2019

RATING: 4.25 stars.

Brenna goes missing on her 16th birthday. Left behind are her father Cole, her mother Erin and younger sibling Sam, each of whom is battling their own problems in the aftermath of that shocking incident. Cole loses his job, Erin starts looking at alcohol as a balm, and Sam wrestles with a deep identity crisis of being a girl trapped in a boy's body. Now after two years, there is finally some information. What happens next? Can the family recover from the trauma of the last two years? Will they reunite?

In spite of being 430 pages long, the book goes by quickly. The author maintains the momentum for most part of the book so you don't feel the length of the read at all. Also, the story is told from multiple perspectives and that helps a lot to get an insight into the family members and their individual struggles.

The story could easily have been a 5 star read for me for the way it unfolds. The characters are human enough and you really connect with their struggles.

However, there are certain areas where the book could have been better.

1. There are too many characters introduced in the initial chapters and it takes time to get your bearings about who is who.

2. The povs sometimes change too frequently. It's tough to keep shifting the narrative focus within a chapter. I'd have preferred if an entire chapter would have been from one character's pov.

3. The book seems to tackle quite a lot of serious topics within its pages: Gender identification issues, parental abuse, domestic violence, racial abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse, abuse of power & position, bullying, child trafficking,.... It felt like viewing a daily soap where everything bad happens to a single family or the people around them. While the issues are tackled decently, it would have been better to focus on 3-4 issues and go into them in detail.

4. Editing: Some glaring mistakes in the book which should have been caught by the editor. Here's one example.

"Ashamed and unable to look at Mrs. Mullins, I looked away and nodded.

Mrs. Mullen said, “Sam, I’m sorry that happened...“

I was screwed. While I couldn’t blame Miss Mullins—she’d done what she thought was the right thing—there was no question in my mind that this was going to make things very difficult for me."

One character, three different names within a couple of paragraphs.

Overall, it is still a very good book for readers who want to go for a literary fiction type of thriller. There are quite a few trigger warnings you need to be aware of if you are going for this book. It's not a cushy read. I can't list them here as they would be spoilers. But I feel most dramatic thriller lovers would enjoy this book.

I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. The above opinion of the book is mine alone.