The Roanoke Girls

January 9, 2017
YA author Engel (The Book of Ivy) makes her adult debut with a gripping if creepy thriller set on the Kansas prairie. Lane Roanoke fervently hoped she had seen the last of Roanoke, the family homestead, when she fled Kansas for Los Angeles as a desperate 16-year-old, but now a decade later the disappearance of her cousin Allegra, the only kin to whom she feels a connection, compels her to return against her better judgment. Indeed, with local law enforcement stymied, it seems that the only hope of solving the mystery lies with Lane and whatever clues she can dredge up from memories of the traumatic summer the two cousins shared as teens. Skipping lightly between past and present, including Lane’s efforts to finally come to terms with the two most influential men in her life—dangerously seductive family patriarch Yates and roguish Cooper Sullivan, her never-forgotten first love—this gothic page-turner speeds inexorably toward the kinds of devastating revelations readers won’t soon forget. Agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House.

October 15, 2016

Fifteen years old when her mother commits suicide, Lane Roanoke must go live with her indifferent grandparents in rural Kansas but bonds with spiky cousin Allegra. A devastating family secret drives her away until she learns that Allegra has gone missing. Engel's first adult novel after the YA titles The Book of Ivy and The Revolution of Ivy; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016

When 15-year-old Lane Roanoke's mother commits suicide, Lane returns to the family's eponymous home in rural Kansas--the place her mother had been so desperate to escape years before. At first, life at Roanoke seems comfortable. Lane and her cousin Allegra have the run of the house and the undivided attention of their grandfather Yates. But over the course of a summer, Lane begins to uncover the same dark family secrets that drove her mother away. Herself fleeing from Roanoke eleven years later, Lane again returns to try to solve the mystery of Allegra's disappearance--and to bring the ugly past to light. Engel (The Book of Ivy) has had success with several YA novels. In her first foray into adult fiction, she creates a memorable cast of characters and a twisting, tangled plot that attracts readers from the first page. VERDICT This atmospheric and unsettling tale of the secrets and bonds of family, set against the backdrop of small-town Kansas, is recommended for fans of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides and Lory Roy's Bent Road. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16.]--Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.