Liz Moore | Long Bright River

The Book:

Long Bright River by Liz Moore, 2019

The Characters:

Mickey, the cop
Kacey, her sister

The Plot (from Goodreads):

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

Click here for book spoilers for Long Bright River

Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read Long Bright River, I suggest you turn back now.

The Ending:

Kacey is fine. Her abusive boyfriend got her pregnant, and she went to their father’s house to get clean and hide from him. She asked everyone not to tell Mickey where she was because Mickey didn’t get along with their father. She has the baby and gets clean, and her life starts looking up.

Eddie Lafferty, Mickey’s temporary partner right at the beginning of the book, was the dirty cop.

The Review:

This book is very dark, very emotional, and at times heart-wrenching. It humanizes the opioid crisis in a way I have not seen very often in the books I read.

Long Bright River is mostly about drug abuse and how easily it can destroy many lives–not just the lives of the users. But it is also a story about family relationships and breaking out of a tough childhood. I thought all of the characters and their relationships felt very real. I really enjoyed their stories, and certainly hoped things would start to look up for each of them.

I have to mention, though, that I hate when books don’t have quotation marks. Please don’t make this a trend! I find it makes the book way harder to read.