The Survivors

Author: Jane Harper 

One-sentence summary:  A new father visits his parents and hometown, bringing up painful memories of the past especially as a new tragedy is investigated. 

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating:  7 

Our favorite thing about it:  Easy, fast summer read. 

Our least favorite thing about it:  Didn’t grab us immediately, took a little while to get into. 

Main Topics of Discussion: Characters, mystery stories, Parent/child relationships 

Our favorite quote:  “Are they supposed to be happy or sad? I mean, is it a celebration of the people who made it, or a memorial to the ones who didn't?” 

Notes:  We liked the experience of reading this book because it was fairly fast to read and easy. But when we sat down to reflect on it, this murder mystery showed some weaknesses. It started off slow and none of the characters stood out. They were all just kind of “blah.” Even the main character, and that’s disappointing. Several characters disappeared (Olivia, Liam) or just seemed superfluous and added nothing to the story (looking at you, George, visiting police detective). We did wonder “who did it,” but this mystery did not have us on the edge of our seats. And the ending was a little unsatisfactory. The murderer acted completely out of character BOTH times. We did think this story would be great as a TV show with maybe a little more character development. One thing we did like was exploring how guilt can affect someone and the interesting relationship between the main character and his parents because of what happened to his brother. Those were at least interesting dynamics, if tragic. We’re not sad we read this book, but it’s probably not one that will leave an impression. 

Memorable Meeting Moments:  With a rainstorm that came through during our meeting, we actually had a chilly June evening! We were not able to swim, but we did enjoy the back porch with blankets! 

What We Ate:  Christina made us filet mignon, baked potatoes with all the fixings, broccoli, watermelon and feta salad, a mixed green salad, and berries with pound cake and whipped cream for dessert.