Saturday, January 26, 2019

12. Run You Down by Julia Dahl

#2 Rebekah Roberts
read on my iPhone
2015 Minotaur Books
287 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 1/26/19
Goodreads rating: 3.76 - 1344 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary NYC and Roseville, NY, just north of NYC

First line/s: "Florida was not what I imagined.  There was no ocean where your father lived, that was the first thing."

My comments: (I wonder why, of all the possible titles this could be given, they decided on this?)  I don't remember much of the nitty-gritty of what happened in Invisible City, but I remember I liked it a lot.  Therefore, I read this book almost as a standalone.  There were a number of things that bothered me, but they didn't bother me enough to lower my rating.  The close connection - and I do mean close - between reporter Rebekah and the people of her news story was soooo impossible, but I didn't care.  I didn't mind switching back-and-forth between Rebekah and the mother who had abandoned her 20 years before, other than in a couple of places that information was revealed by Aviva and I attributed that information to Rebekah having known those details, so that was a little confusing until I figured it out.  It was an interesting story, perhaps unbelievable in spots but for some reason I didn't care.  I really enjoyed it, and the peaks into the strict Orthodox Jewish community,

Goodreads synopsis:  Aviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida-and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.
          But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, N.Y. contacts Rebekah about his young wife's mysterious death, she is drawn back into Aviva's world. Pessie Goldin's body was found in her bathtub, and while her parents want to believe it was an accident, her husband is certain she was murdered.
          Once she starts poking around, Rebekah encounters a whole society of people who have wandered "off the path" of ultra-Orthodox Judaism-just like her mother. But some went with dark secrets, and rage at the insular community they left behind.
          In the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window into a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit.

No comments: