Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared. Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there?
Mesmerizing and luminous ... A literary mystery with a supernatural twist, rooted in humanity and enduring love ... Weaves together a wide assortment of characters and dovetailing narratives, which in less capable hands might read as meandering and confusing.
A brooding, lyrical story about the preciousness of life brought to us by the voices of the dead ... Even though the crime-mystery framing adds some suspense, it’s an unnecessary gimmick next to the moving portraits of lives cut short and lessons learned by the survivors.
Castellani blends true crime tropes with magical realism in his convoluted latest ... Just as the characters are trapped between the living and dead, the novel is suspended between the expectations of a thriller plot and its literary ambitions, and doesn’t deliver on either. It’s a mess.
