Long Bright River

A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

De: Liz Moore

Narrado por: Allyson Ryan

One of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year

Named a Best Book of 2020 By NPR, Parade, Real Simple, and BuzzFeed

An instant New York Times best seller

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick

"[Moore’s] careful balance of the hard-bitten with the heartfelt is what elevates Long Bright River from entertaining page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love." (The New York Times Book Review)

"This is police procedural and a thriller par excellence, one in which the city of Philadelphia itself is a character (think Boston and Mystic River). But it’s also a literary tale narrated by a strong woman with a richly drawn personal life - powerful and genre-defying." (People)

"A thoughtful, powerful novel by a writer who displays enormous compassion for her characters. Long Bright River is an outstanding crime novel.... I absolutely loved it." (Paula Hawkins, number one New York Times best-selling author of The Girl on the Train)

Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: A gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

©2020 Liz Moore (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"An instant sensation and the January pick for Good Morning America’s book club." (Entertainment Weekly)

"Navigates assuredly between the plot twists and big reveals.... Long Bright River is equal parts literary and thrilling." (O: The Oprah Magazine)

"Truly, this is a great literary novel about a city in the age of opioids and two sisters navigating their past. And in the tradition of many great literary thrillers, I promise you, you will not see the end coming." (NPR)

Has no heft

I chose this book because of how much I enjoyed Moore's novel Heft. This doesn't compare. It rambled. It explained things in detail that it had mentioned in detail 3 hours earlier. Sure it had plot twists but nothing extraordinary. She is playing in the space of police procedurals which so many other people do better. Perhaps a different backdrop for her character study would have suited her better.

Her sense of place and architecture is strong.

Mostly predictable

If you are a person who works with those who are drug addicted or vulnerable in any way, the story will be a reminder of every client you’ve ever had.

Strangely Mediocre

My wife (audiobooks) and I (Kindle) we’re both disappointed in this novel. The putative heroine of the story is so bent out of shape psychologically that she can never make a good choice.
Cannot recommend it.It gets tiresome. We did finish the book but cannot recommend it.

Not what might be expected

Given the topic and the overt conflict between the siblings (“cop” and “user”) a dramatic and vibrant story might be expected. Nope. Would suggest potential readers look int the Kirkus review:
“With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.”
Struggled through it and disappointed in the “payoff”.

Beautiful book

Well written and well narrated, this is a story of pain, drug abuse, murder, and growth. I enjoyed it, although I had to be ready for it - lots of blunt realities, and not a wildly happy ending. Honest and true though. Great read.

the Narration challenging

I did not care for the narration. it was choppy and very monotone.
the story held my interest, it was easy to follow the characters.

I say...

I think this one might be best read rather than listened to. The conversations between characters are incredibly repetitive, which makes it difficult to focus. Within 30 seconds, I heard “he said, I said” repeated no less than 10 times. And it’s the same throughout the entire book. The story itself is great, you just have to push through that annoying repetition.

I wasn't the right reader for this book

I listened to the audiobook version. It went on forever. Long Bright River has exceedingly high marks from everyone else, it seems, so I think I just wasn't the right reader for this book.

The plot isn't bad -- it focuses around two sisters, but primarily on the one who is a policewoman (Mickey). In some ways, I saw myself in Mickey. She felt so different from her family, and struggled to find her place in the world. In other ways, though, she was very prickly and hard to like. Her relationship with her young son Thomas was odd and fragile. I felt so sorry for Thomas; it seemed like Mickey didn't know how to really connect emotionally with him. The end of the book was so anti-climactic (she named off about 50 names, in a I Chronicles kind of way) that I stopped listening somewhere in the last 30 minutes.

THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD!

This book has it all! Real and Raw, heart wrenching and heartfelt, a mystery and a masterpiece, this story combines a police procedural with a a family drama all while the opioid Epidemic rages in the background. This book is not for the faint of heart but it never feels gratuitous it never devolves into sensationalism. The narration is superb. It straddles a delicate balance of a tender story and a tough backdrop.

Not a happy book

Not among my favourite books this year, I am afraid. Nothing wrong with it, but it is somehow not 'vibing on my frequency'. There is just a bit too much of fatalism going on, and I, on the other hand, am a firm believer in the fact that we're responsible for our own outcomes.