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Synopsis
Right. Wrong. Life is lived somewhere in between.
Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids.
Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he's still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.
Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families—the ones we are born into and the ones we create.
Synopsis source: Goodreads
Review
Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
HB&W Rating: 4.5 stars
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If you're looking for a book to break your heart, this will surely do it. All I want to do is cry having just finished it. I never would have thought that the author of this book was a Brit, he wrote this western US novel so vividly. Well, mostly anyhow. More on that in a minute.
She looked over at her brother and knew without doubt he was the color to her shade.
Oh, Duchess, you poor sweet soul. All of the characters in this story are tragic, but none more so than Duchess, who grabs your heart from the moment you meet her. She reminds me of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. She's tough, loyal, and takes no crap. She meets out her own brand of justice because she is an outlaw, living only for her brother to have a better life. She's cynical and doesn't believe in anyone or anything because so many people have let her down. But this girl has a heart of gold and a big heart at that. She's going to break your heart in this book so many times.
The two main small-town settings, Cape Haven, California and Copper Falls, Montana, were well drawn and easy to visualize. The story was richly layered with enough diversions to keep you guessing how things would end. It's a slow-burn, for sure, sometimes a little too slow and I will say that I easily put it down several times, but that was mostly due to the writing style. I kept coming back, though, because...those characters.
However, the real stars of the book are the characters, all so richly drawn, even those we don't get much dialogue from (Vincent and Hal). Like I said, each of them has their own set of circumstances that make them tragic and each of them burrow under your skin and have you thinking about them long after the last page is turned. I fell in love with all of them in their own way, main characters and minor characters alike. Duchess, Walk, Vincent, Star, Hal, Martha, Dolly, Shelley, Lucy and Peter, the kind-hearted Hank and Busy and the truck driver, and even Darke.
There were some really beautifully written passages in this book, as seen in the quote I pulled above. However, the author's writing style turned me off A LOT. It was what kept me from giving it a full 5 stars. His sentence structure was all over the place. Sometimes there were sentences, often run-on, sometimes they were fragments but passed off as sentences. Those little sentence fragments, when used correctly, can pack a punch in a written narrative, but this was done so much and in so fragmented a way that I found it difficult to read. Often the sentence fragments were missing nouns and in a few situations, it was difficult to determine who or what that sentence was talking about. He must also have a vendetta against commas because he didn't use many. Commas save lives, you know.
That evening after they ate Duchess took Robin out to the swing set....
At any rate, difficult writing style aside, this book was very good. It's gritty, tragic, and heartbreaking. Nonetheless, it's hopeful and incredibly thought-provoking. It's about the ties that bind us together and the choices that tear us apart. It's about grief and justice and making amends. I'm actually dying to discuss it with someone, so I bet it would make a great book club pick!
Until next time,
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