A House Like an Accordion
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 21, 2024
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- $12.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A woman searches for her missing father in order to reconcile the many strange and fantastical secrets of her past before she loses herself completely in this deeply profound and magical novel by Audrey Burges.
Keryth Miller is disappearing.
Between the growing distance from her husband, the demands of two teenage daughters, and an all-encompassing burnout, she sometimes feels herself fading away. Actual translucence, though—that’s new. When Keryth wakes up one morning with her hand completely gone, she is frantic. But she quickly realizes two things: If she is disappearing, it’s because her father, an artist with the otherworldly ability to literally capture life in his art, is drawing her. And if he’s drawing her, that means he’s still alive.
But where has he been for the past twenty-five years, and why is he doing the one thing he always warned her not to? Never draw from life, Keryth. Every line exacts a cost. As Keryth continues to slowly fade away, she retraces what she believes to be her father's last steps through the many homes of her past, determined to find him before it’s too late and she disappears entirely.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A gripping premise fizzles out in Burges's underwhelming sophomore effort (after The Miniscule Mansion of Myra Malone). Billionaire Keyrth Miller has a secret: whatever she draws in her magically expanding sketchbook appears in real life. Thanks to the book, she's drawn her way out of foster care and into a college scholarship, a family, and a fortune. But her estranged father has a talent of his own: whatever he draws in his own magic sketchbook becomes imprisoned there. When Keyrth's hand turns invisible, she knows her father is drawing her into his book. To track him down and stop him, Keyrth must delve back into her past by traveling across the Southwest in search of the five mysterious houses where she last lived with her family. The narrative loses momentum during Keyrth's travels thanks to ham-fisted foreshadowing about her true origins and an oddly handled love triangle between Keryth, her husband, and her high school boyfriend, Tobias, that ends with an appalling manipulation on Keryth's part. This disappoints.