The story construction is clunky and there are a number of sub-plots going on, yet they never converge into a central theme. There are compelling elements to this story…I think the downfall is in the execution.I was intrigued at times, but bewildered at others. There were times when I couldn’t put it down and others when I found myself skimming just to get through it. The postwoman in Ponderosa feels entitled she moves with confidence and knowing, as if because her fingertips have had the privilege of sorting out Ann’s envelopes, she has glimpsed what she thinks is inside them all – lies, pleas, false trails, dirty news, licked closed by the tongues of the past. There are beautiful sentences, but they rarely string together to create a gorgeous paragraph or chapter. It’s more about the layers on top of the central mystery (Wade and Ann’s marriage, Wade’s illness, living under a cloud that you don’t know much about)…making it feel like more than your average mystery. While the story is built around the crime that destroyed Wade’s family, that’s not really what the book is about.Idaho is a quiet mystery of what happened to a family…and I don’t think I’ve ever used the words quiet and mystery in the same sentence. However, this combination had promise.Marriage, family secrets, memory What I Liked This debut novel caught my attention when I reviewed Random House’s Spring 2017 catalog and, later, I heard good things about it from Shannon at River City Reading. Plot SummaryĪnn Mitchell tries to piece together the details behind the crime that ended her husband, Wade’s, first marriage, and landed his ex-wife (Jenny) in prison for murder. This debut novel has some intriguing story elements, but they never quite gel into a cohesive story. Source: Publisher (Random House) via NetGalley Headline The Ultimate List of Family Drama Books.16 Character-Driven Novels I Couldn’t Put Down.

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Idaho by Emily Ruskovich