'The Girl from Blind River'

Summary:

The Girl From Blind River by Gale Massey is a crime thriller and somewhat a coming-of-age story. The protagonist, Jamie Elders, comes from a family of con artists and though she wants to escape the cycle, participating in the "family trade" seems like her best chance at getting what she needs. Because her mother has spent a significant portion of her life in prison, Jamie and her younger brother Toby live with their uncle Loyal. Loyal is an abusive man who runs a secret gambling operation, which is rigged in favor of himself and the local judge. This partnership leads to the main event, which doesn't initially involve Jamie, but she is pulled in and made an accomplice. When it gets down to the wire, going to prison or walking away depends on one of her greatest talents: poker.

My Experience:

I chose this book as one of my Book of the Month subscriptions last summer. The first few chapters were not very interesting, but I decided I would read the whole book, no matter what, because I spent money on it. I don't think there was a single moment in the book where I was looking forward to the next page or chapter. For a thriller, it was a disappointment for me.

I know this is the author's first novel, so any other works are likely much better. However, there was too much I didn't enjoy or that felt useless in the book for me to recommend it to anyone.

Main Faults:

The overarching problem with this book is that it's incredibly slow. There's a lot of background information that does let the reader into some of the reasons behind Jamie's behavior and attitudes, but there's also a lot that just isn't very important.

The biggest event in the book happens close to three-quarters of the way in. I was waiting for the thrilling crime portion of this crime thriller to arrive, but more than half of the book feels forced and beats around the bush. The book would have been much more exciting if it happened sometime in the first quarter or third of the book because there would've been a lot more times where Jamie was at risk for more than Loyal's fist.

There were also quite a few characters/scenes that didn't serve any significant purpose or move the story forward. Jamie's best friend appears only in a few scenes and does nothing other than offer Jamie a place to shower or hang out for a few hours if she doesn't want to go home. In fact, her main purpose seems to be offering an introduction to her husband, the friend Jamie's boyfriend shares porn with (more on that below). Jamie and Toby's social worker appears so infrequently I often forgot who she was other than another person Jamie didn't fully trust. Her most important role is telling Jamie she's wrong about her mother and why she went to prison, but just like most of the other important, shocking, or exciting scenes, this occurs towards the end.

Many of the characters are stereotypical or play into predictable cliches. Jamie is a brooding young woman who doesn't want to be told what to do. Secretly, she wants to be cared for, but outwardly she doesn't believe in love. Toby is a burly teenage boy without any promising future, ruined by the foster system. He wants to have a good relationship with his mother, but he's misunderstood, so he turns to destruction and bullying. Most of the men in the town are "good ole' boys" and likely alcoholics. The judge is a corrupt and manipulative man who cares about his wallet and reputation above all else. The list goes on.

Mature Content:

It's clear Massey's intended audience is adults. While I personally don't think sexual encounters add value to most literature anyway, the sexual content in this book was uncomfortable, and its final purpose was not of enough significance to warrant the scenes.

Though Jamie is an adult teenager, she has an ongoing affair with a married man who is old enough to be her father. He's the typical stereotype of a man too settled in his day to day life to think twice about having someone on the side. He's obsessed with porn and sex, which is clearly most of Jamie's appeal to him. The intimate scenes tell us he's only concerned about what Jamie can give him and is willing to take what she won't give willingly. Their relationship ends when she finds out he drugged her, made a sex tape, and showed it to his friend.

Toby has an awkward moment where he sees a man at a gas station and suddenly feels an attraction he has never felt towards another man before. He "didn't realize men could be beautiful" but suppresses the foreign feelings. They're never mentioned again.

Redeeming Qualities:

Once the story finally gets going, I was much more interested in what would happen. There was suspense and some things did genuinely take me by surprise. Even though many of the characters felt kind of stereotypical, Massey wrote them in a way that made me feel sorry for the innocent victims and detest the purposeful evildoers. I enjoyed the final scenes and how the story came to a close, though I knew what kind of ending it would be. The story itself isn't a bad one, but it definitely isn't good enough to drive the book the way Massey wanted it to.