The Town Built on Sorrow

by David Oppegaard

Welcome to the strange mountain foothills town of Hawthorn, where sixteen-year-old Harper Spurling finds herself increasingly obsessed with the diary of a local 1860s pioneer girl while a serial killer runs unchecked through the area, dumping his victims into the town's dark river. As Harper's curiosity leads her closer and closer to the killer, she'll have to think fast or join the killer's growing list of victims. Because in Hawthorn, a town built on sorrow, the barrier between life and death is as fragile as an old, forgotten skull.

• ISBN13: 9781635830064
• Publish Date: 26 September 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 14 October 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Rindle Books, Incorporated
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 264
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

Book has mentions of sex, underage drinking, talking skull, & drug use.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

I received an e-arc from the publisher and netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This was a book that a should have loved. It has mystery, history, and it seemed like a little bit of thriller mixed in. But oh how wrong I was. This has been one of the most disappointing reads this year.

We have three/four different perspectives in this book; Hawthorn, Harper, A Skull, & Olav. Now your probably thinking okay. That's more than expected, but we can work with it. That's what I thought to, in fact I thought Hawthorn and Olav would solve the mystery together once I realized he was a part of the story as well. But oh how wrong I was..
Olav finds a skull in the woods when he goes to bury the neighbors cat he accidentally runs over. Now I know what your thinking, okay... should he call the cops or at least tell someone? Apparently not, instead the skull starts talking to him and telling him to do things that he shouldn't be doing ever!
Then we have naive Hawthorn who is obsessed with Harper's diary and wants to know what happened to her once the book ends. So she starts investigating and along the way her and Olav become sort of friends.
That is until Olav starts doing things that Hawthorn doesn't like, but of course he draws her back in with the fact that he has found something about Harper. This was when I was so ready to shake Hawthorn and tell her don't go, he's lying. Thank fully she had started to get some brains by this point and had brought a friend along, but it still ends up going horribly wrong.

Overall would not recommend this book, I didn't enjoy any of it by the end and honestly wished I had stopped reading it after 50% and stopped hoping that it would get better.

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