Hello everyone!
I am back with another book review, today it is So Much Love by Rebecca Rosenblum. Thanks so much to Penguin Random House Canada for sending me a copy of this book for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.
The story really follows a collection of characters in varying timelines, however, the most prominent is the disappearance of twenty-seven-year-old Catherine, as well as a high school boy, Donny, a few months earlier. This is one of those stories that shows how something like this can shake the whole town, but, unlike many other cases I've read, Rosenblum pulls it off in a stunning way. We read chapters from Catherine's professor, her husband, and mother; Donny's girlfriend, the kidnapper, etc. etc. Each chapter feels necessary to the plot, each narration a new piece of the larger puzzle.
And what it took me about half the book to figure out was that this isn't a thriller about a missing woman and her fight to survive. This is a book about relationships, interactions with the people around us and the love we share with one another. In that sense, I think the title is spot on. Despite the horrible things that happen to Catherine and Donny, there is still love in the world.
This book was truly unlike any other I think I have ever read. Every aspect blew me away. The diction and descriptions of the story were so perfectly chosen and phrased, without trying too hard to be put together. The development of the story through multiple characters and the deeper themes within the book also pleasantly surprised me. Rosenblum's writing style is truly lyrical and established, it's one of those books I won't soon forget, just on writing alone.
I think that it is this writing style that is able to elevate this book from just another thriller to a darker contemporary novel with thriller aspects.
I also loved the fact that this book was written by a Canadian author and is set in a Canadian town. As a Canadian myself, I love it when there are subtle differences that I can pick up on, like calling it "grade ten" instead of "tenth grade." Just little things like that that make the story feel more home-y and give a more intimate setting that I can recognize.
I really don't know if there is anything I can find fault in with this one, maybe if I was being really nit-picky I would say that there were one or two POVs that took me a little longer to get into and to figure out who was speaking. After I figured it out, however, I really got into it.
Overall, a new favourite and one I won't soon forget.