Hi friends, happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well. Today I’m posting my review of Christopher J. Yates novel, Grist Mill Road.

Grist Mill Road by: Christopher J. Yates: In the year 1982, Matthew took his friends Hannah and Patrick out to the woods to play. Only, play is not what they did. Instead, Matthew told Patrick to go away while he tied Hannah to a tree and shot her with a BB gun. Patrick, meanwhile witnessed the whole thing, but stayed silent about it, only helping her out of the woods. No one knows the real truth about that day. Now years later, in the year 2008, the three meet again for the truth to be revealed. The premise of this was intriguing and the writing was good, but the execution of the plot and characters was not good. The reader spent most of the time trying to piece together what was happening. It didn’t help the points of view shifted as well as the tenses. When we were reading from Patrick’s point of view in 1982 it was in first person narration, but when we were in 2008 it became third person narration. Then later on in the book when we got Matthew’s point of view it switched to second person narration – talk about confusing. Then sometimes in 2008 it would shift from character to character without notice and then we’d get confused again as to whose point of view this was in. It felt like the author was trying to go for a super suspenseful plot, but really, the reader was left feeling very confused. Yates also kept adding in too many details to the characters’ interests, like food and the restaurant business, geology, rocks and glaciers, that had no relevance to the actual story. It was interesting but it really impeded on moving the plot along. The reader thought the ending was supposed to have this big reveal, and it felt so lacklustre that there was no shock at all. In fact, there were more questions than answers. All this time, the reader thought the author was setting up something… and that wasn’t the case. The one thing the reader did like, aside from the writing, was the fact that no two stories in this were the same, which plays true to real life. No one experiences the same event the same way and Yates did a great job of that here. All three of these characters were a part of the same event in 1982, but each of them experienced it differently. They all thought what they knew to be true, but it’s very clear it wasn’t. As for the characters, as much as they were richly detailed, they also felt vastly disconnected. The reader didn’t like any of them, there was no rooting for any one of them because we just couldn’t feel a connection to them. It was like they were soulless. There were moments when you felt for each of the characters when you learn of different situations in their life, but in the end, the reader couldn’t have cared less about what happened to them. In the end, there was just too much unnecessary background and switching of points of view, all for the sake of creating a mystery, with characters who felt monotonous and dry, for this to really work effetely.