Creatures

A Novel

De: Crissy Van Meter

Narrado por: Piper Goodeve

On the eve of Evangeline's wedding, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor of Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie's mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, Evie remembers and reckons with her complicated upbringing in this lush, wild land off the coast of Southern California.

Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island's world-famous strain of marijuana, Winter Wonderland. Although he raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself. With wit, love, and bracing ashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of love and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief - and the ways in which our ability to love can be threatened if we are not brave enough to conquer the past.

Lyrical, darkly funny, and ultimately cathartic, Creatures exerts a pull as strong as the tides.

©2020 Crissy Van Meter (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

I had mixed feelings

Not my kind of thing but it was fine. I didn't like the flash forward to the marriage because it gave away the ending.

Took me by surprise

I really enjoyed this novel. The storyline, the writing style, the narration. My only issue was that the timeline jumps around a bit making it a little hard to follow at times. But I was still able to connect with the story as a whole and it didn’t detract enough for me to knock off stars. I found the narrator’s tone to be soothing, I just wish the pronunciation was a bit more subtle. Overall, an interesting read that reminds me of Jeannette Walls’ work.

Winter Wonderland

So many metaphors in this complex story. I listened to it, but wonder if it might have hung together better if I had the words in front of me. It was difficult to keep track of the time and the characters.