A haunting tale of The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

"Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or die."

After her mother's suicide, fifteen-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing that devastating secret that made her flee, one that she may not be strong enough to run from again. As it weaves between Lane's first Roanoke summer and her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks, tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secret families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.  

CONTAINS LIMITED SPOILERS

I can not say enough about this book.  It is haunting, eery, and melancholic.  
The Roanoke family history for the girls born there has been tainted for years by a secret. A secret that haunts the farm and it slowly destroys every female member of the family. 

Luckily, author Amy Engel provides you with a family outline at the beginning of the book. I referred to it numerous times. 

Now with this book, I can honestly say one of the main reasons I am so enamored with this book is because most of it takes place in a fictional town not far from where I reside and that it is based in Kansas.  Growing up in Kansas you will be surprised at some of the things people do to amuse themselves.  Engel does a wonderful job of describing such town in her "Osage Falls".  

I kinda laugh at the one description of the town restaurant, in Humboldt, the town I was raised in, we had a little shack like building and its parking lot was a half circle, well you always did your cruise around the King Burger.  I can almost smell the onion rings and the hamburgers.  

When Lane first arrives at Roanoke she feels like she has finally come home.  She loves her cousin Allegra. She thought she would never return to Roanoke after she ran away from it as a teen, but then her grandpa calls with "Allegra's disappeared" and Lane finds herself heading back to find what happened to her. 

With great character development, lovely settings, we travel with Lane to solve the mysteries of her mother's past, come to terms with her feelings regarding Roanoke, and the boy/man she left behind. 

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, it is a definite reread.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for an advanced copy.