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Aided by the ghost of her dead sister, a woman investigates her family’s past—and uncovers the strange, dark history of the island they own.
Idyllic Avril lsland, owned by the Bennett family, where their 100-year-old cottage sat nestled in acres of forest . . . Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after her father disappeared when she was only 12. It’s not until her older sister’s shocking death in a fatal car accident that June discovers the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family—and now it’s hers.
Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, June travels back to Avril lsland in search of answers. As she digs, she learns that the townspeople believe her father may in fact have been murdered rather than having abandoned his family in the dead of night, as she was led to believe by her mother. And that’s when she begins to notice strange things happening on the island—missing family possessions showing up, doors locking on their own, unexplained noises in the night, shadowy figures disappearing into the woods.
It takes June no time at all to realize that her childhood summers at Avril Island were not at all what they had seemed to be . . . in this psychological thriller debut about grief, loss, and the secrets families keep.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 13, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781643856971
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781643856971
- File size: 1038 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 1, 2021
When a young woman rediscovers her family's summer home, it raises uncomfortable questions about the disappearance of her father years earlier. Waiting in a lawyer's office to deal with her mother's estate seven months after her death from lung cancer, May has no idea that this will be her own final hour. Her death in a car crash leaves her younger sister, June, alone in the world, sorely missing the sister who gave her the warmth their own mother could never muster. June is surprised when the deaths of her mother and sister leave her in possession of the family home on Avril Island in Lake Champlain. After a trauma on the island some years before, May had sworn never to return, but interspersed chapters in the warning voice of May's ghost don't keep June from revisiting the summer place. Once on the island, June is held by more than her strong sense of nostalgia. Ezra Keen, the all-grown-up son of the island's caretaker, has taken over the maintenance of the house, and seeing him brings back June's memories of their first kiss many years before. But not all her childhood memories of Avril Island are so good. June starts to remember things about the island that seem related to her father's disappearance their final summer there, and some of the connections seem to relate to the days-later disappearance of West Keen, Ezra's father. Sinister events in the present point to someone threatening June, bringing her and Ezra closer together until their long-buried family histories endanger their renewed bond. Light and easy writing brightens the characters' traumas in this debut novel.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 1, 2021
DEBUT April Bennett always told her daughters, May and June, that she sold Avril Island on Lake Champlain after their father, Simon, left them. Following April's death, May is shocked to learn that she has inherited the island, but because of her inattention after leaving the lawyer's office, she's killed in a car accident. That leaves June as the only one in the family to return to the island. Residents are shocked at the return of one of the "Avril Bennetts" 30 years after Simon's disappearance. Even Ezra Keen, once June's best friend, is surprised. It's only as she finds newspaper headlines and asks around that June discovers newspaper accounts of an affair between her mother and Ezra's father, West; as well as accounts of West's own disappearance, and rumors of murder. In alternating voices, June and the ghost of May uncover the true story of what happened to their family years ago on Avril Island. VERDICT With an emphasis on place and characters, the debut is a slow-moving, atmospheric novel. Only readers with a great deal of patience will wade through the alternating viewpoints from the dead May and the living June to uncover a secret that isn't very surprising.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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