Known for novels featuring "great pacing and true surprises" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) and "nerve-shattering suspense" (Heather Gudenkauf, New York Time bestselling author), New York Times bestselling author Kate Moretti's latest is the story of a scandal-torn Pennsylvania town and the aftermath of a troubled girl gone missing.
"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 co-worker 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.
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[The day the birds fell, I dealt the tower card. Everyone always said to never read your own cards, but who the hell was gonna read mine?]***
(Titan Books, 26 September 2017, ARC provided by the publisher and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is my first time reading the author.
I found the book riveting.
I really had no idea what parts of the story were the truth and what were pretty lies.
Did Nate sleep with Lucia? Was she a witch? Was she bullied? Was she good? Was she evil? Who's innocent? Who are the villains?
The Blackbird Season offers great misdirection. The book is full of twists and turns, subterfuge, half lies and partial truths - my head was spinning as I tried to join all the dots and work out what was really going on.
I really didn't expect what happened at the end. I half believed some of the more elaborate lies so the conclusion took me by surprise.
The Blackbird Season is well worth a read.