Fallen Mountains

By: Kimi Cunningham Grant

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

When Transom Shultz goes missing shortly after returning to his sleepy hometown of Fallen Mountains, Pennsylvania, his secrets are not the only secrets that threaten to emerge. Red, the sheriff, is haunted by the possibility that a crime Transom was involved in 17 years earlier - a crime Red secretly helped cover up - may somehow be linked to his disappearance.

Possum, the victim of that crime, wants revenge. Laney will do anything to keep Transom quiet about the careless mistake they made that could jeopardize her budding relationship. And Chase, once a close friend, reels from Transom's betrayal of buying his family's farm under false pretenses and ruthlessly logging it and leasing the mineral rights to Marcellus shale frackers.

As the search for Transom Shultz heats up and the inhabitants' dark and tangled histories unfold, each one must decide whether to live under the brutal weight of the past or try to move beyond it.

©2019 Kimi Cunningham Grant (P)2019 Tantor

Solid story

Recommended ! Good writing, interesting characters, plot well developed, and a really satisfying (IMHO) ending.

Engaging

Story was very engaging and I thoroughly enjoyed the narration, characters and the author’s writing style

Four characters grown together in a small town complicates relationships.

Fallen Mountain is a real place in Pennsylvania...I reckon.
Two of the characters hate each other. Travis appears incapable of empathy, throughout, the novel. Does he just not care about others people's feelings?
He's been a good friend to Chase all his life. He cares about Chase's grandparents. Travis has a mean streak.
Possum lacks social skills most likely due to his mother's choice in men. The first man she dated he liked well enough, until he's bored one day and reads through stacks of letters.
The second man belittles Possum.
Possum is intelligent though.
Great audio voice. It's rustic like the characters in the novel.
Great read

Plot good, but superficial character development.

What I like about this book:

Narration by James Patrick Cronin was well done, for both women and men. His voice fit the storyline and kudos to him for mastering the regional drawl without “overdoing” it. Too often narrators make backwoods small town characters’ sound fake or stupid.

The setting was unique, a town with less than 1000 people called Fallen Mountains, in the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains.

I appreciate that the mystery wasn’t predictable. All characters were suspect of the crime, including a primary character, the sheriff investigating the case.

The timeline was good, starting with the mystery and going back in time to establish who might have had motive to make Transom go missing, and sheriff Red’s regret of a mishandling of justice 17 years’ prior.

What I disliked most about this book:

None of the characters were likeable. Even their names were annoying, like the author was trying too hard to make them “sound” small town; Red, Transom, Opossum, and Junior (eye roll).

Typical of a small town, every character was somehow related or connected and most had a romantic history. Unfortunately, it turned into a soap opera of constant bed-hopping, none of the characters had a moral compass. It was intentional by the author to show possible motive, but uninteresting because the character development was so poor I didn’t care what happened to any of them.

There was a running theme that “the past is never dead, but it doesn’t have to own you and be all you are” which typically suggests moving on and making better choices. However, the illogical, immoral decisions the characters constantly made and repeated, that theme was grossly unfitting to this saga.

Typical story no mystery or suspense

it was an average story with nothing standing out. i had no empathy for any of the characters nor did the author try to build a lot of flesh for the characters