Sucked In By a Great book

Welcome back from the long holiday weekend.  How did you spend your time?  With your family perhaps?  Hanging out at the pool?  Working the BBQ?  Before I had my son, my husband and I spent the warm summer holidays with our friends out on the lake or river, swimming and waterskiing.  Up here in Seattle, however, the weather is not very conducive for those kinds of activities, at least not this early in the year.  Yeah, if we’re lucky—and we have been so far this spring—the weather might be warmer, but the rain is an ever-present threat, and the waterways are still cold from the mountain snow runoff.  It makes it hard to plan anything outdoors before the 4th of July.

I was pretty tense last weekend after working on edits for my book, and I was stressed over some personal drama that played itself out over the Internet.  I needed to relax.  I had to find something to do, something that would cost me nothing, yet take me away as if on a mini vacation.  So I jumped into a great book. 

I read  Down River by John Hart.  I love a good suspenseful thriller, especially when it involves an everyday guy rather than some PI or police detective who already knows all the tricks.  I prefer an ordinary Joe who finds himself ass-deep in trouble.  But Hart’s Down River is so much more than just a good story.  It’s poetic.

It’s been a while since I was sucked into a story the way I was with Down River.  I pondered over what it was exactly that pulled me in so forcibly and refused to let go.  I think it was a remarkable combination of things, but overall, it came down to the writing.  Hart has a way with words that’s nearly indescribable.  He hits on every beat, every sensation.  You’d think that’d be tedious, walking through every movement, thought, and reaction, but not the way Hart does it.

He writes with deep emotion crackling across every surface, warping every word and reaction.  His words made me feel the heat pulsating off the asphalt.  I could smell the smoke filling my lungs.  I could nearly taste his words, roll them around in my mouth and sample the flavor of his character’s world and emotions.  Down River was very much about the setting, but only because of the way the main character felt about it.  And that made al the difference in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, the story is everything, captivating and suspenseful.  It’s about family and friendship, scorn and love, forgiveness and resentment, longing and loss, expectation and disappointment, all wrapped around a series of mysterious events.  I thought I knew who-dunnit at least three separate times, but I never saw it coming, the ending, the big reveal.  It was truly shocking, and I’m almost never surprised anymore. 

So now I’ve found a new author I love, whose words I will savor as slowly as possible, whose books are so awesome that, even though I have no room for them in my meager budget, I will give up something special and necessary in order to buy them, even after I’ve already borrowed them from the public library. 

When was the last time you were completely sucked into a book, so much so that you stayed up all night reading, unwilling to put the book down?  And what was it about that book that kept you so enthralled? 

Oh and by the way,

I will be revealing the cover for my book,

THE MISTAKEN,

on Friday, June 1st.

So come on back over and let me know what you think!