I’ve read the author’s work before and found it enjoyable, so I had some expectations going in. This proved to be a strange book, though, a book that tried to do too much, a book that didn’t know what it was or wanted to be. So much so that it ended up dropping steadily from 4 to 2 stars throughout the reading. And here’s why…
First thing first, Yardley can write, immersively and evocatively. The writing itself is fine. The plotting though left so much to be desired. Meet Cherry LaRouche, the darling of Darling, Louisiana. A wild child who’s made every possible wrong choice in her 20some years that led her to the place she’s when we meet her…a crappy apartment with a lecherous landlord with two young fatherless kids, one with severe special needs, and a cleaning job that barely allows her to get by. Oh, Cherry. If only you had listened to your mother…or I don’t know, used protection. Anyway, Cherry hated her mother, but now that mother has died and left Cherry her place – a ramshackle place that contains no good memories but it spacious, private, and paid off for five years. Cherry takes it. Moving back proves surprisingly easy. Quite literally, the moment Cherry sets foot back on Darling’s soil, she is surrounded by fawning admirers. People are just lining up to feed her, sand her deck, watch her kids. Why? All Cherry ever tells us is how evil Darling is. And yet… And then, there’s all the romance. If there’s one single thing that drags this novel down it is that…the fact that it so desperately tries to be a romance novel, which is…you know…yuck. Unless you’re into that sort of thing, which doesn’t make it any less yuck but might make this more of the right choice for you. As a teenager, Cherry hooked up with the most popular kid in Darling and vamoosed. The kid proved to be a royal penis and dropped her like yesterday’s trash the second their special needs kid was born, but that should give you some idea of Cherry’s taste in men. Also, the fact that her second child was created while she was prostituting herself trying to pay for the first one. Now, that she’s back, all the men who missed their opportunity the first time around with Cherry and who apparently have just been waiting around this entire time, come flocking in. She selects the hot one with a stupid name over her awesome brother-in-law with a strange name. (This is the South, y’all). Then she proceeds to toil in this cheesily torrid love triangle. Oh, also there is a serial killer around who seems to enjoy abducting, murdering, and dismembering small children. Also, there may or may not be a supernatural angle to it all. This includes the father of one of the victims, another devastatingly handsome Indian man with liquid eyes - a description the author is such a fan of, she uses it over and over again in an almost fetishistic manner. There’s also Cherry’s number one female friend, a blunt weirdo who lives alone with her mother in a distinctly Bates-ian sort of way. And then, Cherry’s baby girl gets abducted, and things get even crazier. So, what was the author trying to do here? Was she going for a Southern Gothic? (because she got there, again in a strangely fetishistic way). Was this meant to be a serial killer mystery? A romance? A tale of supernatural? Was the author, as a mother of a special needs child herself, writing an ode to moms such as her everywhere? Because that’s a lot for a single novel. And while there might be a way to make all of it work, this book doesn’t find that way. It crams too much and muddies the waters, especially for the serial killer mystery angle. Ambitious, sure, but in the end, a flop. Not a terrible flop, a readable, even mildly entertaining one, but overall, it underwhelms and disappoints more than it entertains. The writing’s good but doesn’t distract from the strangely nuanced yet clichéd characters. Some readers might fall under Cherry’s spell, but this darling’s charms are not for everyone. Thanks Netgalley.
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