Things Don't Break on Their Own
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“So, so, so good. An elegant, twisting story of loss and longing, of the ache of the unknown and the drowning weight of past trauma.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
EDGAR AWARD FINALIST • A BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A WASHINGTON POST AND BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON
A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.
Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t.
Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break.
Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere—the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there’s the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.
When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that’s not about to change tonight.
Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A stray comment at a dinner party proves seismic in Easter Collins's devastating debut. After Willa Martenwood's younger sister, Laika, goes missing near their wealthy family's London home, a teenage Willa escapes the ensuing media circus by transferring to a boarding school. There, she becomes friends and secret lovers with her roommate, Robyn Bee. Twenty-two years later, Robyn is a happily married mother of three, while Willa is engaged to boorish cad Jamie and remains obsessed with finding Laika, whom she believes is still alive. When Robyn invites Willa to a dinner party she and her wife, Cat, are hosting, Cat bristles; she's jealous of Willa and fears Jamie will ruin the night. Still, the evening goes smoothly enough—until one guest makes an offhand remark regarding the thesis they're working on about the corruptibility of memory, which sends Willa down a rabbit hole and eventually convinces her that Laika might be closer than she thought. In kaleidoscopic first-person narration that alternates between Robyn and Willa's perspectives, Easter Collins skips back and forth in time, imparting details about each woman's past and fleshing out their characters at a steady clip. Though the plot goes to some far-fetched places, evocative prose holds the whole thing together, and Easter Collins enriches the mystery with some thoughtful reflections on the rippling effects of domestic violence. It's an auspicious start.
