Life got in the way and I almost didn't have the opportunity to read this book, much less finish it and write a review. But I set aside two days to focus on it, and I'm glad I did. It was worth those two days. It was worth much more than that. In Leah's Wake is beautifully written, haunting, fascinating, and a book that has a lot to say, a lot to teach you, without getting preachy. Since we're all about editing around here, I wanted to talk about a few things that really stood out for me. Terry Guilano Long did two things exceptionally well with this novel. First, deep POV. Sometimes deep POV is a hard concept to keep in mind when writing, but she pulled it off perfectly. She switched between several POVs within the family, and even one cop who is in the position to view the family. Whenever she switches, it's with purpose. The reader learns something new about the characters, or the world. We may learn new information about a past event or understand how one event greatly impacted the lives of the family in startlingly different ways, for example. We learn there is a thread of memories, of intimacy and love, good times and bad, binding this family together, and sometimes the greatest tragedy is that they don't see that. But we can.
