If ever the word epic was appropriate for a story, it’s for this book
At 580 pages it’s a tomb of a book but not one word is wasted.
Spread over three decades, and full of unpredictable but realistic twist, this is one hell of a story.
Two young misfit kids find themselves attracted to each other because they are almost outcast from the other children their age.
Patch, a one eyed boy who lives his childhood as a pirate, and Saint the geeky late developing girl.
A childhood friendship built on being two outsiders.
When Patch goes missing protecting a young girl from attack the police investigation soon peters out.
He’s alive and being kept in a dark cellar, but he’s not alone. There’s a young girl with him. A girl he can’t see in the dark, a girl that asks him to imagine her features by touching her face. She talks in strange quotes and try’s to educate him with her cryptic stories.
Her name is Grace.
Saint never gives up on Patch and through her amateur, childish investigations finally thinks she’s found him.
In the commotion that follows the Saint and the Police find Patch but there’s no sign of the girl he says was in the cellar with him.
Over the next three decades Patch devotes his life to finding Grace.
Over the same three decades Saint, who joins Law Enforcement tries to keep Patch out of trouble, and independently looks for Grace for her own reasons.
There’s no real spoilers in what I’ve written above. Patch’s abduction and his release happen fairly early in the book, the real story is what follows.
The characters in the book weave in and out of the plot around Patch and Saint.
The relationship between Patch and Saint is never really a “will they, won’t they” get together, it’s more the story of two best friends who love each other unconditionally but more as brother and sister.
It’s all about what each of them will do to prove that Grace existed. Patch because he thinks he loves her, and Saint because she is on the trail of a long dead killer.
This is my first Chris Whitaker book but, coincidentally, whilst I was reading it he was recommending to me by a fellow book worm.
She was talking about a book I’d read, a gothic fantasy novel, and I had said the second in that series was the same story as the first. We both love crime fiction and she said to me, aren’t all crime stories basically the same.
Many of them are, but this one definitely isn’t like any I’ve read before.
She’d found it and pointed me in Chris Whitakers direction.
Now I’m looking at his back catalogue.
Pages 580. Publisher Orion. Audiobook length 14 hours 37 minutes Narrator Edoardo Ballerini
nigeladamsbookworm 