REVIEW: THE ROANOKE GIRLS, BY AMY ENGEL

 

“Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.”

After her mother’s suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother’s mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran…fast and far away.

Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.

MY THOUGHTS:

It was not difficult to figure out the darkness hiding behind the walls of the beautiful estate called Roanoke. The charismatic grandfather/father, Yates Roanoke, had a way about him, a way that drew the girls to him. They were all wounded in one way or another, and his kind of love felt better than no love at all. Their mothers had died or run away, and they were left behind, not believing they were worthy of love. And Yates was there, promising them love and protection from the outside world.

Allegra was probably the most wounded, as her mother left when she was only a couple of months old. She knew she was not destined for a normal life, but she still loved having control over her lover Tommy, luxuriating in the belief that she could have him any time she wanted.

Lane’s mother, Camilla, had left when she was pregnant with her. They were together for sixteen years, but Lane never felt loved. She sensed that there was something dark about Roanoke that her mother would not talk about. It would be years later before she learned why her mother couldn’t seem to love her.

Narrated in the first person voice of Lane, The Roanoke Girls weaves back and forth in time, sometimes in a repetitive way, inserting brief snippets about the previous generation: Sophia, Penelope, Eleanor, Camilla, and little Emmeline. We learn about the summer Lane came to Roanoke for the first time, at age sixteen, and why she fled after that brief period, holding her own secrets close to her heart.

Coming back to search for Allegra will resurrect all the pain of the past. Will she find closure? Or will she simply experience, once again, the powerful pull of darkness that has kept all the girls fragile and in a suspended childhood world?

What happened to Allegra? Did she, too, run away, or did something nefarious happen to her? Why did Tommy’s jealous wife Sarah come to see Allegra only hours before she disappeared? Will the police find the answers, or will another secret be locked away behind the walls of Roanoke? 4.5 stars.

***