Where All Light Tends To Go by David Joy

4 Stars

 

"Blood's thicker than water, and I was drowning in it."

Jacob McNeely has been raised in the mountains of North Carolina by his father - a real uhhhhhhh self-made man . . . .



His momma is still around . . . kinda . . .



Unfortunately, she didn't take the advice of Fat Amy so the majority of her life has been spent scratching at imaginary bugs and other important things like looking for a lightbulb.

Jacob came to terms at an early age that there would be little to no chance of getting out and has always done what his daddy told him - even when those things were of the sort that would nag at his conscience for eternity . . . .



When one of his "chores" goes South, Jacob must decide whether he's all in for life or to take a risk on a life with the girl he's always loved . . . .



If given more time to mull it over, this might end up as a 3.5 or even 3 Star book for me. That's why I'm not giving myself more time to think it over. I started reading Where All Light Tends To Go with my morning coffee . . . and never put it down. At 260 pages with prose that really sucked me right in, it wasn't hard to finish this in one sitting.

That's not to say the story was perfect. Daddy ran an empire, but we were never really given any details about the operation. Jacob was assigned to supervise some serious tasks, but was pretty much incompetent with zero common sense. Various scenes were totally far-fetched and the last 25 pages or so kinda shit the bed for me and didn't give me the kind of adrenaline rush of an ending I had been planning on all along . . .



Buuuuuuuut, the book was un-put-down-able and it had a great freaking soundtrack . . . .



For a debut, this was solid and I will definitely pick up whatever Joy comes up with next. Hick Lit is quickly becoming a genre of choice.

Hear that, NetGalley? You shouldn't have denied me this one.

Thanks to the library for having my back . . .