Title: The Blackbird Season
Author: Kate Moretti
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction
3 STARS
From Goodreads:
“Where did they come from? Why did they fall? The question would be asked a thousand times…
Until, of course, more important question arose, at which time everyone promptly forgot that a thousand birds fell on the town of Mount Oanoke at all.”
In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall onto a high school baseball field, unleashing a horrifying and unexpected chain of events that will rock the close-knit community.
Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alicia, are well respected throughout town. That is, until one of the many reporters investigating the bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia soon buoys the scandal by claiming that she and Nate are engaged in an affair, throwing the town into an uproar…and leaving Alicia to wonder if her husband has a second life.
And when Lucia suddenly disappears, the police only to have one suspect: Nate.
Nate’s coworker and sole supporter, Bridget Harris, Lucia’s creative writing teacher, is determined to prove his innocence. She has Lucia’s class journal, and while some of the entries appear particularly damning to Nate’s case, others just don’t add up. Bridget knows the key to Nate’s exoneration and the truth of Lucia’s disappearance lie within the walls of the school and in the pages of that journal.
Told from the alternating points of view of Alicia, Nate, Lucia, and Bridget, The Blackbird Season is a haunting, psychologically nuanced suspense, filled with Kate Moretti’s signature “chillingly satisfying” (Publishers Weekly) twists and turns.
Once I read what this book was about, I felt like it was going to have all the right elements for me. It’s character driven, it has a plot that immediately caught my attention, not to mention the overarching mystery of a thousand birds falling from the sky for no apparent reason. Whaaat? Had to know what that was about. I thought it would be a book that I fly through and finish in no time at all. But that was not the case. I found this book to be a little hard to get into at first, and I can’t put my finger on why. All I know is that each character, although very well developed, was unlikable. All four main characters had a lot that they were going through, but I didn’t really find myself rooting for anyone. It made me less excited to read. Going into this book I expected it to be chilling and suspenseful, but I didn’t really feel too much of the “suspense” part. It was exciting enough to find out what happened and read till the end, but it wasn’t a gripping-the-book-while-sitting-at-the-edge-of-my-seat kind of a suspense. Although the story did pick up during the second half, there seemed to be a few things that were left unanswered. Yes, I do understand why and what the author was going for, and I do respect her choice to do so, but I personally would have liked a tad more.
On the positive side, I thought the pacing of this book was fantastic. Even though I had a hard time getting into it, I can’t deny that the fast pace of events kept me going. The creepy vibe throughout the book was also a plus, especially with it being fall, it fits right into the season. I liked reading Alecia’s point of view and the day-to-day happenings with a child with autism. As a special education teacher, I am appreciative of parents with special needs children as well as bringing awareness to all. Another positive was the twist at the end of this book. It did feel a little rushed, but I didn’t see it coming. Like at all. The whole time I thought I had it figured out, but nope! I was wrong. I always enjoy alternating viewpoints in a book, and this was no exception. Overall, I liked this book, but I’m not sure that I loved it. I do however, love the title and the cover!
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