There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. - Aldous Huxley

This is a mystery/drama that takes place in the very small former paper mill town of Mt. Oanoke, Pennsylvania. It has all the pieces to make it a great book but it just didn't work well for me.

It is told in four points-of-view. There is Alecia, the wife of Nate and the mother of Gabe, a boy with autism. There is Nate, teacher and coach who is accused with sleeping with a student and, after her disappearance, possibly harming her. There is widowed Bridget, a fellow schoolteacher with Nate. And finally there is Lucia, teenager with a very troubled home life that some people consider a witch.

One of my problems with the book is that I didn't like or empathize with any of the characters. None of them.

Another problem is that it was difficult at times to keep track of who was telling the story, especially between Alecia and Bridget.

This was an okay story about the boundaries teachers need to set for themselves - knowing and understanding their students but not crossing into impropriety.

It is also a story about husbands and wives, families, and friendships.

I just didn't feel any real momentum about the student being wronged or being missing in the story. It was well enough written, I guess, as a character study but not as a mystery, which is what I thought I'd be reading. There is a mystery here but it seemed very low-key, almost an afterthought.

I received this book from Atria Books through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

The Blackbird Season is a rich, gripping thriller set in a small town that is dying a slow death after the major employer, a paper mill, shuts down. The setting adds to the bleakness of everyday life in Mt. Oanake, Pennsylvania. The story is both modern and classic. In some aspects it feels like an old Hitchcock movie, but there are also very current themes such as inappropriate student-teacher relationships. Interestingly the story is written in a third-person narrative with four different points-of-view.

The four main characters tell this dark story, and each of their perspectives gives readers some interesting insight. However, it is unclear if any of these narrators are reliable. Nate, the golden-boy teacher and baseball coach, is accused of having an affair with a student. When she subsequently disappears, he is then suspected of fowl play. His narration is the most suspect. He vehemently denies the affair, but he gets caught in foolish lies. His behavior, including his connection with students on social media, once made people think he was a highly involved teacher; now it makes the same people question his ulterior motives. Alecia, his wife and mother of their autistic child, tells the tale of their home life. Parenting a special needs child is exhausting. Alecia is high strung, and she throws time and money into a myriad of treatments and therapies that mask her denial of her son’s limitations. She paints Nate as a self-absorbed egotist who ignores his responsibilities as a father. In doing so, she inadvertently shows herself as being shrewish and high-strung. Bridget is the “bridge” between Nate and Alecia. She is Nate’s co-worker, and while she steadfastly defends him publicly, she desperately continues to look for proof that he truly is innocent. Bridget is Alecia’s only friend, and both remember fondly their days of couple dating before children. Yet, Bridget appears to have a bit of a crush on Nate--as if she has always longed for his attention, even while her husband was alive. She is one of the most interesting, layered characters in the entire book. The final narrator is Lucia. She is the student with whom Nate is allegedly having a tryst. Is she a neglected daughter and bullied student? Is she a practicing witch, as her classmates claim? Is she victim or villain?

The story layout was very interesting. With each new bit of information revealed by one of the characters, my opinion changed about Nate’s innocence, who might be causing all the problems, and whether or not Lucia had runaway or died. In addition to the use of different POVs to add dimension to the story, the timeline of the story rocks back and forth with the raining of starlings as the fulcrum. Bits of narration happen before or after the town suffers a plague of birds falling from the sky in the middle of the high school baseball game. This very eerie occurrence adds greatly to the creepy feeling of the book, and the event not only puts everyone on edge but it seems to make them more susceptible to irrational thinking. Her classmates call Lucia a witch, and the townsfolk are on a witch-hunt to find Nate guilty of statutory rape and perhaps murder. The inclusion of tarot card reading was interesting only because of the number of times someone dealt a card with a blackbird on it (not only because the town suffered a plague, but also due to Lucia’s obsession with blackbirds). There was insufficient explanation as to why both Lucia and Bridget read tarot cards, so its inclusion in the story didn’t add more than a little reminder about the creepy bird plague.

Overall, I found The Blackbird Season to be a compelling page-turner. It is heavy on the development of characters with interesting backstories and complex relationships. There is enough mystery and twists to keep readers turning pages. The story and setting ooze desperation, bleakness, and the cloying claustrophobia found in a dying town. The short chapters make for easy reading. The secret lives of high school students might be the most frightening aspect of the book!

4.5 stars

In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall onto a high school baseball field, unleashing a horrifying and unexpected chain of events that will rock the close-knit community.

Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alecia, are well respected throughout town. That is, until one of the many reporters investigating the bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia soon buoys the scandal by claiming that she and Nate are engaged in an affair, throwing the town into an uproar…and leaving Alecia to wonder if her husband has a second life.

And when Lucia suddenly disappears, the police only to have one suspect: Nate.

Nate’s coworker and sole supporter, Bridget Harris, Lucia’s creative writing teacher, is determined to prove his innocence. She has Lucia’s class journal, and while some of the entries appear particularly damning to Nate’s case, others just don’t add up. Bridget knows the key to Nate’s exoneration and the truth of Lucia’s disappearance lie within the walls of the school and in the pages of that journal.

My Thoughts: The alternating perspectives of Nate, Alecia, Bridget, Lucia…and others reeled me into The Blackbird Season, a dark tale that probes beneath the surface of small town life in Pennsylvania.

Could the golden boy Nate have crossed some lines while dealing with his students? Could his desire to help them have drawn him into a dark place? And what is behind his almost obsessive need to be liked by everyone?

As a result, I found myself not really liking Nate, who always seemed defensive and did not prioritize his family at all. However, there was also the possibility that more was hidden beneath the surface, and that others bore a great deal of responsibility for what happened to Lucia.

Bridget, of course, was his biggest supporter and the friendship that Alecia had once felt for her began to fizzle. How could Bridget blindly believe Nate when the evidence suggested otherwise?

And what was Lucia’s game? She seemed broken and who wouldn’t empathize? But her seductive, weird behavior bugged me. I don’t automatically believe the stories teenage girls tell. But it was also possible that some of what she said was true, even if there were lies and manipulations involved.

What would happen before the truth finally came out? I couldn’t stop reading, waiting for it all to unravel so we could see and understand. 5 stars.

***My e-ARC came from the publisher via NetGalley.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the Advanced Reading Copy of this novel. The author was new to me. I thought the plot and pacing were quite good, and I didn't see the ending coming at all, so kudos for that. Unfortunately, I really was disappointed in the ending, I didn't really feel like it gave closure for me. I found many of the characters really unlikeable, or else too pathetic for me to feel much connection to them. And lastly, I still don't necessarily understand why the title is what it is. I understand it's tied to an event at the start of the novel, but I just didn't see how the title fit the book.

I featured this book here: http://www.bethfishreads.com/2017/09/7-thrillers-mysteries-to-read-in.html

II read an ARC of this book through NetGalley. It was a good book with some surprises. I loved "The Vanishing Year" by Kate Moretti and was really looking forward to this one. The main theme of this book is a mystery revolving the disappearance of a troubled high school girl. There are other concurrent themes, ie. the difficulties of raising an autistic child, small town life, high school bullying, etc. The novel is atmospheric and brooding at times. There is also a mystery concerning hundreds of birds that fall dead from the sky at a high school baseball game. That foreshadowing is relevant because that is the beginning of trouble for the high school baseball coach and his family.

Mysterious and engaging. The characters were lacking in depth but the plot makes up for it

The Blackbird Season is the story of a town that fell victim to the recession after the closing of a paper mill and now several years later is torn apart by scandal. It focuses on a handful of main characters who are very well-developed with distinct stories and personalities. I enjoyed Moretti’s writing style – that is what kept me reading. I hated some of the characters - but I was supposed to mostly - but the development of the characters with the alternating points of view kept me intrigued.

The blackbirds definitely were one of my favorite things about the book and added something to the story to make it feel creepy. Dead blackbirds and tarot cards… *Shiver.* And they weren’t just a side-note; the blackbirds falling brought reporters to the town in the first place – which led to the scandal.

But the plot just didn’t do it for me. There weren’t a lot of twists or suspenseful build-ups like I was expecting. It was much more slow-burning. Even the reveal of what happened in the end was kind of gradual so that you knew it was coming. Maybe because I was expecting more of a twist and more of a conspiracy, the ending left me wanting and feeling like that’s it? There had to be more to it.

All in all, I would read another of Moretti’s novels because I did enjoy her writing, but I wouldn’t call this book a psychological thriller or a suspense novel like it is being marketed as. It’s more of a drama and a mystery – kind of in the realm of Jodi Picoult. In fact, now that I say that - that is exactly what this book is like. It is very similar to Picoult - and I also enjoy her writing but not always her plots or resolutions. So, that being said, I’d definitely recommend it if you like Jodi Picoult – it has a similar style of a slow-burning kind of mystery to some of Picoult's novels. And it also dealt with tough topics of ethics similar to her books. I wish that would have been more of my expectation going in because I probably would have enjoyed it more.

About: The Blackbird Season is a thriller written by Kate Moretti. It will be published on 9/26/17 by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 352 pages. The genres are mystery, thriller, suspense, and fiction. Please see below for more information about the author.

My Experience: I started reading The Blackbird Season on 8/28/17 and finished it on 9/13/17. Reading this book is a bit of a push for me. The actions were tame and the story was slow paced. The accusation of student/teacher relationship got my attention as well as birds dropping dead from the sky, but other than that, there isn’t much going on. I do like the reminder of not knowing the truth about people and how the stars shine on the popular while the unpopular is lost in the shadows. I like Bridget and how seeking the truth matter to her.

This book is told in the third person point of view, following Nate Winters, a high school math teacher and baseball coach. Another point of view is Alecia Peterson, Nate’s wife and a stay-at-home mom to their autistic 5 year-old son, Gabe. The third point of view is Bridget Harris, creative writing teacher at the same high school and friends with Nate, still coping with the death of her doctor husband Holden Peterson who died from cancer a year ago. This book started out slow and is a bored to read until 28% later. Change started to occur after thousands of black birds dropped dead from the sky. People in the small town are worried, businesses and schools closed for a week, Alecia has a breakdown, Nate transformed from everybody’s best friend to the most hated guy in town, and Bridget is going through the motions. Then Alecia was questioned by a local reporter about her teacher husband Nate and his affair with a student. The fourth point of view is Lucia Hamm, a senior at the high school, nicknamed “the witch” is a troubling student with a broken home life. Each chapter has a date so it switch back and forth to the past and the present. Nate is the kind of person that helps people even though his family is struggling with bills to pay, he would still help others who are more unfortunate than he is. Everyone loves him and he has many friends so when out of the blue he’s being accused of an affair with a student, no one knows who to believe. Then Lucia goes missing..

The mystery in this book lasts a long time. There weren’t much interesting actions happening. Mostly Alecia having trouble with her autistic son and Bridget’s losing herself, taking random turns. Each person’s view is a bit depressing and there isn’t anything interesting reading about them. This book talks a lot about the old mill, an added bored to the adults’ boring lives. I like the ending. I was able to guess who did it. If you are looking for a small town mystery, this book is for you!

Pro: mystery, third person point of view, cover,

Con: confusing when Alecia’s and Holden’s last name are both Peterson, slow start, too much focus on the adults’ boring lives and the mill

I rate it 3.5 stars!

xoxo, Jasmine at www.howusefulitis.wordpress.com

This book deserves an added sixth star. The characters were well developed and interesting. There was no obvious villain to hate, which shows the author's talent in crafting a well-rounded thriller that will make the reader think. The reader will want to race to the end while at the same time slow down to reflect on decisions the characters are making. This book would be a great choice for creative writing students to read and discuss during class.

I loved this book! I had previously read Kate Moretti's book The Vanishing Year and thought it was great. The Blackbird Season had a number of twists and turns that kept you guessing until the end. There were also a few different mysteries weaved together throughout the story. The story is told from a number of different character's perspectives and jumps around in time, Every time there was a cliff hanger it jumped to a new character and time which made it very difficult to put the book down. My one criticism would be that it was a little hard to keep track of the dates sometimes. Some chapters just gave a date when some said "3 days before the birds fell". I would have liked every chapter to have been labeled in relationship to the birds falling so it would be easier to follow - I found myself flipping back and forth to chapters to check dates too frequently.
The main characters have a son with autism which I didn't know before I read the book. My sister is autistic and I was a bit shocked at how accurately Moretti was able to communicate the emotions and tiny nuances that can go along with caring for someone with autism.
While some of the characters in this book did some things I didn't agree with all of the characters were well developed and I found myself rooting for them all to come out ok in the end.
I will definitely be recommending this book to others and will be buying it for my mom when it gets released!

I was expecting something a bit "more" from this novel -- I really, really enjoyed The Vanishing Year and so I was hoping for something similar along that vein. The Blackbird Season appeared to me as ambiguous and vague ... "did she or did she not," "did they or did they not," etc. At the same time, I wanted to know what happened, but I found it easy to put this one down and move on to some other activity. I was hoping for more action, a sweeping climax, more about the blackbirds, and this book failed to deliver on those points. However, it was fun to read an advance copy before its publication, so thank you, Netgalley.

The Blackbird Season explores the death of a school girl in a tiny town where nothing happens and everyone is deeply involved in each other's business. The School's Coach is suspected of being involved with the student and maybe even killing her, things of course goes downhill quickly.

This was a decent read, it could have been more thrilling. I felt like I could see the end of the book coming a mile away. The characters didn't do it for me, I felt they were a little underwhelming and I just didn't get into it as much as I wanted to. It wasn't as interesting, neither was I hooked.

Overall a decent beach read.

See link to goodreads review

This book was an advance copy I downloaded via NetGalley. This book has all the makings of a deeper intrigue; unlikable characters, small town society with layers and layers of issues.

The story is relatively simple, after a very strange incident that occurs in a small Pennsylvania town things start spiralling out of control. There are strange accusations flying around and everyone has their own burden to bear. Each of the strange ensemble is struggling with both inner demons ( not in the sense of actually requiring medical attention) as well as what fate throws at them.

The only reason I struggled with actually completely enjoying this book was the rapid change between the timelines and most of the characters all being annoying in their own way. The actual main story line in itself was very good but the bad emotions involved seemed to drag away the focus.

A troubled marriage, long-term but questionable friendships, a teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a student - all are things we hear about or encounter in daily life. These situations make up the basis for "The Blackbird Season" by Kate Moretti. All these things, and a flock of starlings falling suddenly from the sky with no explanation can make one wonder if witchcraft is involved.

Lucia has always felt different than other kids her age. A mother who left home when Lucia was little, a drunken father who disappears as well, and an abusive, heroin-addicted brother don't really add up to make a very stable or "normal" home life in the small Pennsylvania town where she lives. Lucia has one friend, Taylor, who has been by her side since childhood, but who is now also barely tolerating her best friend. Lucia is weird and freaky and on the fringes of the high school clique. Some people think she's a witch.

Nate, a high school teacher, and his wife Alecia, dealing with the struggles of an autistic child and their growing distance from each other and Bridget, their best friend, also a teacher and newly widowed, make up the main characters of the story.

Suddenly, Nate, the whole town's best friend and the school's best-loved teacher, is accused of the unthinkable - having a sexual relationship with the troubled Lucia. The town is divided in its loyalties, but surprisingly, most believe he is guilty.

Chapters in this book are written in alternating perspectives, which I appreciated, as it gave good insight into the characters, yet still left enough to the imagination that I wasn't completely sure how the story would end. I found only one character even semi-likeable, but that didn't ruin the story for me; it made it more intriguing.

Well-written and mysterious enough that I finished the book in less than 24 hours,

Spoiler: I do think some of the story was somewhat unbelievable in the police investigation of a teen's disappearance. The obvious location to look, the paper mill, was neglected by the police, and there was no mention of the obvious disturbance of evidence at the scene. These details didn't especially detract from the story for me, but were still glaringly obvious. I rate the book a 3.5 rounded up to 4.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book was pretty good. I could relate with many characters. The only thing that I didn't like was that the beginning started with all the fallen starlings... so what actually happened?

A fast paced thriller set in a small town, The Blackbird Season immediately pulls you in.  A troubled teenager disappears after accusing a beloved teacher of having an affair with her.  Morretti alternates between the narratives of four main characters telling a story that goes far beyond the simple “who dun it.” I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters, who I found unnervingly trite, which would be okay if the characters were likable.  Overall, I enjoyed the journey but was left wanting more. That said, I still tore through the book. Not perfect but certainly a page-turner. And I will definitely be reading more Kate Morretti in the future.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
It starts with falling birds. In Kate Moretti’s “Blackbird Season” throngs of blackbirds fall out of the sky, for no apparent reason causing a small but temporary panic in a Pennsylvania town. When reporters show up to investigate the mysterious occurence, one reporter catches what she believes to be the local high school baseball coach (and English teacher) wrapped in an embrace with a student. Soon, rumours fly. When the student disappears, the townspeople’s speculations go from bad to worse- Nate Winters may now be a murderer. As Nate’s colleagues and friends choose sides, and his wife struggles to figure out where the truth lies, the birds are forgotten. But why then did the missing girl draw pages and pages of blackbirds in her journal right before she disappeared?
I have never read Moretti before, although I know of her work (she is one of those “perpetual TBR” authors, for some reason I just keep neglecting to pick up her novels). This finally changed with “Blackbird Season”.
With an unpredictable plot and honest characters, Moretti’s novel is suspense-fueled and drama-ridden. The novel is told from alternating viewpoints (Nate, his wife Alecia, Nate’s colleague Brigette, and the missing girl Lucia) and from alternating time periods (before the birds fell, and after). I enjoyed the different viewpoints with this novel but the different time periods made the story slightly more difficult to keep track of (possibly, as always, due to this being an electronic version). There was also quite a bit of characters to sort through, but the task became less daunting as the novel went on. The teenage angst-ridden characters were genuine and I can appreciate the effort Moretti put into getting every detail right, even down to their slang and language use. I also adored the character of Gabe, Nate and Alecia’s autistic son. Props to Moretti for also being honest, and open, with Gabe’s behaviours and diagnosis. She clearly knows her stuff.
I enjoyed the novel, and the ending was unpredictable yet satisfying. The ups and downs of each chapter and the different “truths” that ran through the novel (depending on the point of view) made the novel captivating. I loved the broken down small town setting of this novel too, and the importance Moretti gave to the closure of the town’s paper mill- its primary employer.
I would’ve loved to have seen the birds actually play a more significant part. Although a possible cause of the deaths of the birds was given, there was a lot of speculation and I would’ve enjoyed it more if a plot twist had been incorporated that would’ve wrapped this plot point up succinctly. Especially since that is, based on the title, what the book is about.
A thoroughly good read, overall. Romance, suspense, drama and intrigue portrayed by genuine characters in a realistic setting. This story has piqued my interest and in fact I may now explore Moretti’s other novels.

The Blackbird Season is a character driven, dark tale with transitioning POV between the 4 main characters (Alecia, Nate, Lucia and Bridget).

It begins in a small town in Pennsylvania at a high school baseball game. An ominous event....dead starlings raining down. This will become a recurring theme throughout the book.

The community is toxic in more ways than one. Lucia, a troubled and neglected teen-age girl is an outcast. Some of the other students have taunted her and labeled her a witch. Nate is a beloved and trusted teacher who becomes entwined in her personal life outside of school. Alecia is Nate's wife and wonders why he has taken such an interest in Lucia. Is it Lucia's wild white hair, her red lips, her youth? And then there is Bridget, a fellow teacher at the high school. She is a trusted friend of Nate and also Lucia's teacher.
After Lucia goes missing, the accusations and questions abound. What happened to Lucia? Why was Nate with her at a seedy motel? Who is to be believed, to be trusted? Will Nate's wife and close friends defend him or question his involvement?

The story is more of a mystery about what happened to Lucia. Although there were suspenseful moments, it was not an edge of your seat thriller in my opinion. Also, the mystery of why the birds fell was more of a omen than integral part of the story. It is very well written with some shocking revelations, but not the type of thriller I was expecting! If you enjoy a story where you are questioning why and who, this is one you will enjoy.