I am terrible at keeping up to date on review writing but we are 6 months into 2021 and if I don’t catch up soon Ill never catch up!
The Lola Quartet By Emily St John Mandel (read in February)
3 Stars
So– I should really write little snippet reviews when I check something off in Goodreads because then when I log in to write a review four months later I can write something more than “I feel like I thought this was OK but also that it could have been a lot better although I can’t remember how I would have improved it.” The most memorable part of the story is there is a weird tie in to The Glass Hotel which I only noticed because I read it last year and is not relevant enough for you to read it before reading this (although it was probably a better book) but its shoehornedness still sticks out to me after all this time.
“If you tell a lie it’s easier to tell another.”
Gavin Sasaki is a disgraced New York journalist who moved back to his home town in Florida to work for his sister, Eilo, who is capitalizing on the housing crisis of 2009. While the biggest reason to move to Florida, which he escaped after graduating due to his tendency to develop heat stroke, is his impending homelessness following his dismissal at his newspaper Eilo has also come across a 10-year-old girl with the same last name as Gavin’s high school girlfriend who disappeared a little over a decade ago and who looks a lot like she could be Gavin’s.
Gavin is consumed by the knowledge he may have a daughter out there and begins investigating what happened to Anna after high school. The story alternates POV & timelines between Gaving, Anna and the other members of the “Lola Quartet” (the band Gavin was in during high school) as we discover what happened to Anna and where she is now. It was fine. As I delve deep into my memories I think my biggest pet peeve was that a straightforward novel from high school to 2009 would have probably been a more interesting novel vs the “mystery” of is this little girl Gavin’s and if she is what happened to Anna- oh here is what happened to Anna but it is all flashbacks.
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