THE BREATHLESS

A Southern gothic about family secrets and a dead sister.

Nearly a year ago Cage Shaw fled after being spotted over the dead body of his girlfriend, Ro Cole. Ro’s artistic younger sister, Mae, still doesn’t know what really happened—though she suspects it was more than it appeared to be after finding an old family-heirloom journal that was most recently Ro’s. In it is such disturbing content as the “Ritual for a Raising,” other apparent spells, and cryptic notes, some written by Ro herself. Meanwhile, Cage wakes in a hospital with vague memories of a motorcycle crash and makes his way back to the decaying Cole home, Blue Gate, where he’s shocked to learn that a year has passed, Ro is dead, and he is a pariah. He says he’s innocent, and Mae finds herself believing him. In between Mae’s investigation of Ro’s secrets and Cage’s attempts to figure out what’s happened over the past year, the text jumps back into Cole family history, to 1859, when Grady Cole falls for a magic-using outsider with the ability to raise the dead. The modern-time romance is light, as both of Mae’s potential love interests are hung up on Ro, and the setting—the derelict estate on the Alabama coast—suits the creepy, ritualistic, magical elements of a plot that confuses at times but mostly weaves together by the ending twists. All characters are white.

A plot-heavy saga.