Review | Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Mickey and Kacey are two sisters on different paths in life and no longer speak to each other. Mickey is a patrol police officer, raising a little boy by herself. Kacey is an addict who is constantly fighting to get better. When dead bodies of women turn up, Mickey starts searching for Kacey, worried that she might be caught in a dangerous situation.

I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was. I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.

I was really excited about Long Bright River but it fell short for me. I love character studies but I need to relate to them in the first place. I couldn’t do that with Mickey. She comes across naive and clueless despite her circumstances. She doesn’t seem to know basic investigative skills despite being a cop. Her interactions with other characters feel clinical. We get descriptions of every terrible event that happened but none of the emotional fallout I would expect in her situation.

I feel like this book tries to be many things at once but it’s essentially a police procedural disguised as literary fiction. Even until the end, I’m not sure what it’s trying to say. Police corruption? Murders of forgotten women? Single mothers? Bonds of sisterhood? All the elements are here but they never go beyond the surface. In addition, and this is purely my personal preference, but I really dislike the lack of quotation marks. There is a lot of “I said” “he said” in the dialogues which I found disrupted the reading flow.

What I appreciate though is the book’s unflinching look at the perils of addiction, and how the effects ripple across generations. Substance abuse is a social problem and this shows how heartbreaking it can be to watch innocent lives get ruined. If there’s one thing the book did right, it’s to put a spotlight on how drug addiction leaves collateral damage in its wake.

Long Bright River is a muddled attempt at a police procedural mystery, but a commendable look into addiction and its effect on an entire community.

CW: drug usage, addiction, grooming.

I received a copy from the publisher and Netgalley for review purposes.

About the author: Liz Moore

Photo by Chris Murray