The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

Towner has just returned to Salem, Mass. after fifteen years of estrangement from the place and her family.  She left after the suicide of her twin and returned when her stepgrandmother went missing.  Towner comes from a long line of lace readers, which is something like being a psychic.

The setting was beautiful.  The theory had a lot going for it.  The love interest a cop (yum).  I don't think that Barry pulled it off though.  It took many times of starting and at least 100 pages to get into the book.  Not a whole lot of lace reading going on despite the title.  Towner seemed many times like she was 50 instead of 32.  By the end I was disappointed that I had finally come to feel for the character.  I felt something like betrayal........the character was infact not the character I had come to know.  I needed to reread the book, and not in a good way.

Rating 2.5  There were some good parts in there.

Rating PG 13 Sexual abuse (alluded to), alcohol and drug abuse, child/spousal abuse, suicide.