The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Hodder & Stoughton | March 2017 | 288 pgs

Source: Library

"The Roanoke girls seem to have it all. But there's a dark truth about them that's never spoken. Every girl either runs away, or dies." 

Lane Roanoke was a troubled girl. Her relationship with her mother was anything but close. When her mother committed suicide when she was fifteen, she had nowhere to go to except to her mother's old hometown in rural Kansas. Lane wasn't close with her grandparents either, but they took her in. Lane then learned that she had a cousin who was six months younger than her. They got along quite well, and Allegra was more than thrilled to show her around the house. However, there was one thing that bothered Lane, and that was the generation of the Roanoke girls before her. From what she'd learnt from Allegra, they either ran away or died and Allegra didn't elaborate much further. Lane finally knew the hard truth one day and left Kansas but Allegra refused to leave, claiming it was her home and everything. 

Eleven years later, Lane received a text from Allegra but Lane never replied or contacted her. It was only later when she learned of her disappearance which had her return to Kansas with a sense of remorse. As much as she dreaded going back, she knew she owe it to Allegra and most of all, she has to find out the truth about her disappearance despite the darkness and ugliness of the Roanoke's family secrets. 

The Roanoke Girls wasn't what it seemed to be at first glance. The blurb offered nothing but a hint of family secrets surrounding the Roanoke girls. It had an atmospheric feeling though it was set in a small town in rural Kansas with agricultural farming as their core business. Told from two different time frames "Then" and "Now" through Lane's perspective, the story was intriguing and Amy Engel's writing was beautiful and had this reader hooked quickly. However, the story then took a turn and the secret was hinted out fairly early and thereafter my reading experience was no longer the same. Learning what the secret (subject) is felt like the rug was pulled out from under me because it was the last thing I'd expected from this story. It was unsettling and disturbing yet the author's writing and the mystery surrounding Allegra's disappearance pulled me back to the story. 

The truth in the end may deem as a resolution to Allegra's case but it offers no redemption quality as far as the story goes, which is a pity. This is not a book for everyone, but Amy Engel is a good writer so I may want to read her YA dystopian series (The Book of Ivy and The Revolution of Ivy). 

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