A family is reeling from the death of their teenaged daughter and sister, and each deals with it in their own way. This is primarily the mother's story - a tale of grief, guilt, and blame. There is some gorgeous writing, but the characters are kept very much at a distance from the reader and the final act didn't have the pay-off that I think it was intended to have.

3.5 stars ( )

This is a spare novel about the impact of the loss of a child on the rest of the family. The sense of dread builds as the book progresses. You know something will happen, but what? ( )

Evgenia Citkowitz explores the devastating effects of loss in her first full-length novel The Shades. Catherine is a gallery owner who is still reeling from the loss of her daughter in an accident over a year ago. She wanders around the family’s country home-unable to return to work, barely coping with daily activities, and hiding from neighbors and friends. Her husband is spending increasingly more time at their London address, working and trying to reconcile his own beliefs about his relationship with Catherine before it became so distant and disconnected. Their teenage son, Rowan, has reacted to the death of his sister by running away to a private school. He becomes increasingly involved with environmental activism and seeks concrete ways to wrest back control of his life. The short novel alternates between these three characters, highlighting their separation and alienation from the world and each other. When a strange waif-like girl arrives at her doorstep, claiming to be the daughter of the previous owners, Catherine immediately sees her as a surrogate for her own lost child. Catherine become increasingly obsessed with taking this stranger under her wing, but Keira may not be who she claims to be. Catherine may not be able to recover from another loss and she is casting about for a sense of purpose as depression threatens to overwhelm her. In The Shades, Citkowitz provides a dense tale filled with emotion and a sense of lingering despair as this small family verges on collapse under the weight of their own grief. ( )

Thanks to the Goodreads Giveaway program for the free copy - looking forward to reading and reviewing this novel!

Thanks to the publisher, W W. Norton & Company, for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Evgenia Citkowitz is a new author for me. This novel is advertised as a mystery but, to me, it was not very suspenseful. It's the story of a family coping with the untimely death of their daughter and sister, Rachel. It studies each of the parents and brother as they cope with their grief in different ways. Not only is the loss of a young person's life a tragedy, but the family left behind is profoundly affected. There are not a lot of characters in this novel which I liked. But I felt the story line moved slowly including some details that didn't relate. The ending was confusing but by that time, I just wanted the family members to come together and realize that they still had each other.

Even though the author did a good job of getting inside the grieving minds of the three main characters, this novel probably won't be a memorable one for me. ( )