The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

The girls of the Roanoke family - beautiful, rich, mysterious - seem to have it all. But there's a dark truth about them that's never spoken.

Lane is one of the lucky ones. When she was fifteen, over one long, hot summer at her grandparents' estate in rural Kansas, she found out what it really means to be a Roanoke girl. Lane ran, far and fast. Until eleven years later, when her cousin Allegra goes missing - and Lane has no choice but to go back.

She is a Roanoke girl.

Is she strong enough to escape a second time?

This is going to be a hard review for me to write as my thoughts on this book are so mixed. I don’t want to give too much away but the main plot focuses on a form of sexual abuse that has never sat comfortable with me and as soon as it was revealed in this book I was unsure whether to carry on with the book but on the other hand the authors writing style flows so effortlessly and she gets straight to the point without drawing the storyline out unnecessarily which made this a fast-paced gripping read.

The Roanoke girls are like any other family, these girls are “special” Everyone is envious of the beautiful girls, men are instantly attracted to them, girls are bitterly jealous of them but if they knew what really made these girls special they would feel relieved that they are not a Roanoke girl.

Secrets that have been covered up by this family for years are threatened to be revealed when Allegra goes missing and Lane has no option but to return back to the terrible home desperate to find her.

The only way I can describe this book is like going past a car crash and knowing you shouldn’t look but curiosity always wins! 

The storyline was predictable but I wanted to carry on reading to see how things reached the conclusion I was expecting to lay ahead. It was impossible for me to warm to any of the characters because they were not the type of people I would ever be able to relate to but I was still intrigued to see what would become of this family.

The author delivers the disturbing psychological issues that the characters has in great detail so I can assume that she has done a lot of research when it comes to this part of the book. I also found it easy to visualise the settings of the book especially the random carvings that Allegra often left.

This is a really twisted and disturbing read that I am sure will divide many readers in their opinions, it certainly has something as I sped through this book so quickly but I think this is more in thanks to the authors writing style rather than the storyline as it is not a book that I would pick up again and because of the subject matter I don’t feel this would be a book that I would comfortably recommend.

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