Casey’s Past Comes Back to Haunt Her
The instant I heard about The Drinking Gourd, I was intrigued by the premise, so I added it to my reading pile. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out to be as enjoyable as I was hoping.
Casey Cavendish was weeks away from graduating from college when she was arrested for dealing cocaine, a crime she denied. After serving ten years for the crime, she is back in the small college town of Oberlin, Ohio, trying to complete her final semester of college.
However, Oberlin has seen an uptick in drugs in the past few weeks, and the rumors are swirling that Casey is involved again. Then the community is rocked when Casey’s former best friend, who married Casey’s former boyfriend, is found dead. Was it suicide? Or murder? If the truth doesn’t come out, Casey might be facing more time for crimes she says she didn’t commit.
Sounds promising, right? I was looking forward to finding out what happened ten years ago and how that is playing out today. However, that’s not quite what we got.
The story gets off to a decent start. We meet Casey and some of the other characters and begin to get some idea of the relationships between them before the dead body is found. However, the plot doesn’t really pick up after that.
The problem is, the book is as much about Casey dealing with returning to the small town where she grew up and went to college as it is about the crime. Now, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was plenty of plot, but everything was treated as of equal importance instead of being a main plot and sub-plot. As a result, I felt frustrated by the pacing instead of fully caught up in the story.
The book is written third person, and it gives us scenes from several different character’s points of view. These transitions are always clear, and they do help drive the story. This is especially true since much of the investigation actually takes place when we are in the head of Chief Crockett.
Now, don’t misunderstand – there are some good twists in the story. They are mostly crammed at the end, which gives us a bit of whiplash. However, that ending was page turning, and I got caught up in the action.
And I really did like the characters. Casey was sympathetic. Even when she was making some poor decisions, I could understand her actions; I just wanted her to make a different decision. There were several other characters I enjoyed.
Then there are the things that just made me curious. The novel is set in the 1970’s, but it really could have been set in any time. There’s nothing that makes that setting come alive. So why was this time period chosen? Likewise, a few things are added to the story, but they feel a bit forced into things.
This isn’t one of my typical cozies. The language and violence were a bit more than I would have liked, but I didn’t feel it was obsessive. However, there was a short chapter that went way too far in the sex department. At least it was a short chapter.
Obviously, it is easy to pick apart what went wrong. When I was reading the book, I was caught up in the story and with the characters. But the little things kept bothering me, and an effort to smooth them out would have really helped.
The Drinking Gourd turns out to be an average debut mystery. There is promise in there, and I hope the author improves as the series progresses.
It does sound like a brilliant idea for a novel. I'm sorry it doesn't really come to fruition. From reading your review here, I did want to know if Casey really was innocent! The 70's were a unique time, but not as unique as the 60's of course. I was at university in the 70's. In the 60's as a teen I mostly remember pot and LSD, but I guess cocaine might have been a bigger thing in larger centres.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed this overall, but too graphic would be a turn off for me too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
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