Lena Blackwell runs a scenic river lodge in rural Maine with her adopted sons, Luke and Jonah. When Jonah starts investigating his past to find his birth parents, Lena's carefully constructed world is in danger of collapsing.

I feel like this book had a lot of potential, especially in addressing the ways people adapt to trauma, but it just didn't pan out. I think Lena sitting down and having a heartfelt and honest conversation with Luke and Jonah, coupled with some family therapy, could have saved everyone a whole lot of self-inflicted, unnecessary drama. I'm not sure if there was supposed to be a twist because the whole story was pretty obvious from the get-go. I appreciated the multiple timelines and varying POVs, but this wasn't a great book for me. Lots of other reviewers have really enjoyed it, so give it a whirl if you are a domestic thriller fan.

3.5 stars

Lena Blackwell has kept a close eye on her two sons while running a successful river lodge in Northern Maine. But it’s their past that she’s really protecting them from. Luke is content with working at the inn and learning the business, but Jonah is determined to find his biological parents, threatening to cause fissures in the peaceful life Lena has worked so hard to give them.
Lena tries to keep the truth under lock and key, but when an unexpected visitor whom Lena knows all too well shows up at the inn, it throws a wrench into her plans. Luke is caught in the middle, wanting to be supportive of his brother while also wanting to trust that his mother knows best, but does she really have their best interests at heart or is she being selfish by keeping them in the dark?

This was a pretty good domestic drama, and I really liked that the story went back and forth from Lena’s past and her whirlwind relationship/marriage to the present day with her sons. It gave a lot of insight as to why she ended up running the inn and why she was so overprotective of her sons. I did find that my attention began to waver later on in the book when the scenes became more “action-packed”, but I think at that point I felt the story was a bit rushed, whereas it was more even paced earlier on. Overall, I think the book had a lot of potential, but it fizzled out at the end for me.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing a copy of this book to review.*

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for gifting me a digital ARC of Dark Rivers to Cross by Lynne Reeves - 4.5 stars!

Lena's past is catching up to her. She is running a successful river lodge in Northern Maine with her two sons, Jonah and Luke. The boys were always told they were adopted and Jonah is desperate to know his true roots, while Luke is content with life the way it is. Jonah's quest threatens to change everything.

I really liked this book and the way it explored difficult subjects. While it's a tense, atmospheric thriller, the beginning dedication says it all - For women torn between impossible choices. What would we do to protect our children? What cost will they pay for those decisions? What toll does trauma take on all parties involved? The story is told in different timelines as we get the backstory of why Lena made the decisions she did. A great read!

Lena Blackwell had to flee her life in Boston due to domestic violence. She moves to Maine and reinvents herself, running a riverside lodge in Northern Maine with her two boys. As her boys reach college-age, one of them begins to ask questions about their father. Stirring up old secrets and potentially fatal futures.

Themes include: domestic violence, mental health, alcoholism, inherited trauma, and the lengths a mother will go to protect her children.

LOVED THIS ONE! The twists, the turns, the amazing characters and the mind blowing ending! This story focuses on a mother who will do absolutely everything to protect her children. Just do yourself a favor and read this book!

Thanks to NetGalley, Lynne Reeves, and the publisher, Crooked Lane Books for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Dark Rivers to Cross is a domestic thriller. Lena Blackwell has kept her sons at her side, at a remote river lodge in Maine. Her son Luke is happiest in the pine forest along the Penobscot River. Jonah his adopted brother is in search for the truth about the past. Lena just wants to keep everyone safe.

Lena is ever watchful, always seems to be aware of what is happening at all times with her sons. Jonah’s need to find out the truth threatens Lena. Luke has no need to know anything about his past, he is happy as things are. But an unexpected arrival of guests changes everything for Luke.

Luke surprises Jonah at college only to find he left to follow up on information he found about his father. Luke playing catchup is also investigation from another angle, his mother's past. Each of them will uncover the truth Lena never meant them to become aware of, but this information will put them all at risk and jeopardize them all.

This was a compelling story about a mother doing what she believed was best for her children. Lena's story is so courageous as she tries to manage a life with a man bent on horrific cruelty until he crosses a line. This is definitely a page turner; I couldn't put it down. I also loved the ending, it's not a happily ever after, but it was a new beginning for all, and it felt so right.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Dark Rivers to Cross is the story of Lena Blackwell and her sons Jonah and Luke. They live a fairly idyllic life running an inn in the Maine wilderness. Jonah threatens to shatter this illusion of perfection when he starts questioning his past, poking holes in the story Lena told the boys about their adoption. Lena fled from her past to keep the boys safe, but Jonah's interest threatens to unravel everything and put them in danger once again.

The story is told both from multiple timelines and multiple perspectives, filling out the rationale of Lena's escape from her previous life. While I do enjoy multiple timelines and perspectives, I feel like the execution could have been a bit better. I also wonder why the story only utilized Lena and Luke's perspectives when so much of the story was focused on Jonah's push for discovering his past. This seems like a missed opportunity for meaningful character development in my opinion.

I would have liked to see the mystery/discovery phase to last a bit longer in the story. Once Jonah and Luke begin to pull at the threads of their mother's story, it feels like their discovery of the truth is immediate. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to build suspense or throw in a red herring. As thrillers go, it was a bit lacking in the "thrill" department. The development was still very interesting, it just wasn't very suspenseful.

That said, it was still an enjoyable read. I especially enjoyed the flavor that the setting of the Maine wilderness gave to the book.

CWs for domestic abuse, loss of pregnancy, murder.


Crossposted to goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5049575051

An emotional look at a dysfunctional family. The back and forth between various years kept me sort of confused at the start. Eventually I was able to go with the flow of things. Lots of secrets and lies. Good characters, along with the bad. Truth eventually becomes evident to all.

How far would you go to bury secrets and protect your loved ones?
This book was definitely outside my normal book type. I am so happy I read it though!
I was simply captivated by the writing style. The character development of the Lena, Jonah, and Luke is so delightful to read.
My biggest gripe about this novel though comes from the side characters. I felt that some of them were almost unnecessary outside of a scene or two. They were characters that just as easily could have been written out with minor changes, but I digress.
Please please give this book a read! I think it was beautifully done and shows the depth of what one would do to bury secrets and protect their loved ones.
Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for giving me a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Dark Rivers to Cross by Lynne Reeves is out November 8, 2022!

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Lena Blackwell is a woman running from her traumatic past. Deciding she had no choice but to leave Boston to keep her two little boys safe, she bundled them into a friend’s car and headed north. Stopping at a run-down fishing camp on the Penobscot River in Northern Maine, the owner, Irving Cooper (‘Coops’) let her stay in an old cabin and kindly brought her food and supplies for the boys. Loving the beauty and serenity of the site, she decided to stay and together with Coops, built a new inn and refurbished the old cabins eventually turning the site into a successful and popular wilderness lodge.

As her boys Jonah and Luke grew, they learnt to manage the business and also to love the river and the woods. After finishing school, nature lover Luke wanted nothing more than to stay there on the river, acting as a tour guide taking the guests hiking in the woods or canoeing on the river while Jonah, longing for a life away from the lodge, went to college to study film making.

After twenty peaceful years where no one had come looking for Lena, she is hopeful that they are finally safe. Lena had always told the boys they were adopted from a foster home, but refused to give them any details about their birth families. However, Jonah decides he wants to find out more about his origins and use his search for a college documentary. Luke reluctantly agrees to help him, little suspecting that what Jonah discovers will endanger them all.

This riveting tale of what a mother will do to protect her children, told from Luke and Lena’s points of view in dual time lines, gradually filling in Lena’s backstory as the current events unfold. It’s an emotional tale of trauma and mental illness, explaining why Lena is running and why she feels she must keep their whereabouts secrets at all costs, even from her best friend. The writing is very atmospheric, with such a lovely sense of place that you can almost smell the fresh air tinged with the scent of the pines and hear the gurgle of the river flowing past.

Recommended for those who enjoy a thriller which gradually ramps up the tension and sense of menace as Lena fears her hard gained serenity and sense of safety are under threat, to culminate in a very suspenseful and explosive ending.

Tense, taut and thrillery Dark Rivers to Cross takes place in Maine and is told from several perspectives and over multiple timeframes. The suspense is practically anxiety inducing, the (mostly) natural setting is beautiful and conducive to mystery and the characters interesting, some downright despicable. The definitions at the chapter endings are an interesting choice and speak volumes. The parallels are clever.

Lena fiercely loves her adopted sons so much that she is willing to risk her life for them. Thankfully they are safe on her secluded rustic property where they operate accommodations and nature pursuits such as hiking. Both in their early 20s, Luke is far more at ease in the quiet of the outdoors than in urban environments while Jonah goes to college. However, tranquility is shattered when Jonah begins questioning his parentage and begins a search in earnest. Luke is content not to dig deeper into his and is concerned for his brother. Lena is desperate to prevent her past from being raked up. Even family friend Coop doesn't know all her secrets. Silence is golden until it isn't.

Those seeking a mystery with zip and oomph ought to read this. There are a few unrealistic bits and my preference would be a different ending but it is very enjoyable for what it is. Author Lynne Reeves skillfully packs a lot into a short novel. Do know there are scenes of domestic abuse.

My sincere thank you to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital ARC of this fabulous book which I nearly inhaled.

For two decades, Lena Blackwell has kept her sons Jonah and Luke close to her, teaching them everything about running a river lodge in Northern Maine, but keeping them in the dark about their tragic past. From the blurb: "Dark Rivers to Cross explores inherited trauma and the stories we tell the ones we love. It’s about what one mother is willing to sacrifice for her children."

This story takes place over different timelines and from the points of view of different characters and I was very involved in it. Although I enjoyed the story, I didn't agree with Lena's decision to keep her sons' history from them but I guess there wouldn't have been much of a story otherwise. At the end of some of the chapters were definitions of certain words or phrases, mostly to do with water and its dangers. I'm not sure about the point of the definitions except that maybe they could be taken to represent turbulent times in the characters' lives. It was interesting anyway. I'm a little ambivalent about the ending; it was a little too tidy for my liking. 3.5 Stars rounded up!
CW: domestic abuse

Thanks to Crooked Lane books via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance digital copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own. This review will be posted on Goodreads as of October 30 and on amazon.ca following publication date of November 8, 2022.

The following review will publish Nov. 1 in The Cullman Times, The Athens News Courier and the St. Clair News Aegis:

By the book: A suspenseful November includes ‘The Break’ by Katie Sise, ‘Dark Rivers to Cross’ by Lynne Reeves and ‘Extinction’ by Bradley Somer

By Tom Mayer
tmayer@cullmantimes.com

‘The Break’ by Katie Sise

If you haven’t read Katie Sise — “Open House,” “We Were Mothers” — consider her latest, “The Break,” (Little A, Nov. 1) a primer: the author’s suspense novels capture her cinematic roots, but delve deep into our collective unconscious, featuring strong female leads faced with inconceivable choices and situations.
The dedication page of “The Break” is telling: “For every woman who has experienced a traumatic birth. For anyone whose path to creating a family has been marked with loss. For every woman who had battled postpartum mental illness.”

Mystery writer Rowan O’Sullivan has the perfect family — newborn baby girl, Lila, devoted husband, Gabe, and a part-time au pair, June, to help the family settle into their new life — though you wouldn’t know it from the opening salvo. Rowan has blocked the traumatic birth and when we first meet her she’s in Lila’s nursery chatting with a therapist. The cracks widen.

Rowan “just knows” something isn’t right with her life, her baby, her marriage and she suspects June is at the core of the disruption. When the nanny disappears, Rowan is left to untangle her fragile and unreliable memories, trying to uncover what happened to June while simultaneously burying a dark past.
Remarkably readable, “The Break” explores Rowan’s growing instability, delving into depths of emotional trauma that come full circle to a satisfying and unexpected end.

‘Dark Rivers to Cross’ by Lynne Reeves

Trauma can be generational, and this is the river Lynne Reeves’ novel “Dark Rivers to Cross” (Crooked Lane, Nov. 8) plunges us into from page 1. Like “The Break,” Reeve’s novel is “For women torn between impossible choices” — and includes directly after that dedication what every novel of this stripe should harbor, a content warning for those whose issues of family violence and trauma can act as triggers.

It’s little wonder that Reeves includes such a disclaimer. Her day job for more than 30 years has been as a family and school counselor; she knows the aftermath of childhood nightmares.

In “Dark Rivers to Cross,” so does Lena Blackwell, a woman who has sheltered her adopted sons for decades by erasing nearly every connection to their shared past. When one of the boys decides he wants to uncover his biological roots, Lena’s actions to keep her children from the trauma that could overturn the calm waters of their lives — a neat literary device by the author are dictionary definitions sprinkled throughout, each centering on the dark forces of river currents — shows the depths and choices to what a mother will descend to protect those she loves.

“The Break” is the second novel Reeves has written under her own name — she has three, family-focused books as Lynne Griffin — and coming on the heels of last November’s “The Dangers of an Ordinary Night,” the author is showing herself to be competently in control of domestic suspense, churning lives into stories that reach our own inner recesses.

‘Extinction’ by Bradley Somer

You’ll have to work to make some of the connections that tie the speculative fiction with the near-apocalyptic storyline in Bradley Somer’s novel, “Extinction,” (Blackstone Publishing, Nov. 22) and you’ll almost get there — but going along for the adventure is worth the effort.

Ranger Ben has perhaps the loneliest job on the now environmentally devastated Earth, tracking and protecting the last bear in existence. Part of a severely stripped team that works in the most rural place on the planet to count and watch over the world’s vanishing breeds, Ben — and to an extent, a colleague, Emma — develops a moral code and work ethic that Somer matures well. When he is confronted after weeks alone in the frigid wilderness by a wealthy poacher, his son and Ben’s estranged mentor acting as guide for the pair, Ben’s ethics and physical endurance are tested, twisted and reshaped as moral dilemmas develop.

A subplot involving references to lunar colonization and the psychological trials of space travel seems almost superfluous in this near-future adventure story, but you’ll understand the call to action the author is laboring after here, even if the path to get there is more circular than the straight moonshot if could have been.

Her second novel, Dark Rivers to Cross by Lynne Reeves is a domestic suspenseful tale. Lena Blackwell has run a river holiday cabin business in the Maine woods, whilst protecting her two sons from the secrets and dangers of her past. Now a college student, Jonah the eldest decides to find the truth of his adoption for a film making class project. Against the strong objections from his mother and the reluctance of his brother Luke to assist, he forges ahead on his own. Despite the folksy backwoods ambiance and a sensitively handled family inherited trauma theme, a warning is required as some readers may find it triggering. Initially, the narrative jumps between different geographical places and timelines to establish the backstory, albeit somewhat confusingly. The emotional benefit of nature is clearly presented, yet its borderline saccharine ending makes for a disappointing two and a half star rating. With thanks to Crooked Lane Books and the author, for an uncorrected advanced reader copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.

Lena has been keeping a big secret from her sons Jonah and Luke- but they're adults now. They've always believed themselves to have been adopted when they were very small and they've almost always lived in Northern Maine, where Lena runs a lodge, Now, though. Jonah wants some answers about himself - he wants to find his bio parents, and this opens a can of worms that takes everyone down dark paths. This has difficult scenes and once you've read those, you'll have a better understanding of where this will go because I'm not going to spoil it. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A page turner.

Lena Blackwell has been teaching her sons everything she knows about managing their prosperous river lodge in Northern Maine for the past 20 years while keeping them by her side. But she wants to hide their awful past from her boys. Luke, her son, is exactly where he should be, working at the inn the family owns along the Penobscot River, hidden by acres of pine forest. Luke, therefore, declines to assist Jonah, his adopted brother, when he attempts to disrupt their tranquil existence by looking for his biological parents. Lena is trying to obstruct Jonah’s efforts to learn more about his past. However, her intentions are derailed when unexpectedly, old acquaintances show up at the inn for a weekend away from technology. She had no idea that Jonah has already gathered enough data to launch a lethal reckoning. Even though Luke claims to not be interested in his family, he finds himself torn between the painful truths his brother is anxious to reveal and the heartbreaking secret his mother is willing to keep hidden at all costs.

In Dark Rivers to Cross, hereditary pain and the tales we tell those we care about are delicately examined. What one woman is prepared to give up for her kids is the subject of the story. Because of the graphic portrayals of trauma, abuse, and violence in the story, some readers might be sensitive to these topics and should proceed with caution. This has been made clear by the author by issuing a content warning right away. As the kids get older and more interested in their origins, the mystery element of the tale develops. Everything comes together in a well-written tale where Lena and her sons, Luke and Jacob, are as much of a character as the surroundings, particularly the Penobscot River’s waterways.

I felt anxious and my heart was beating since the ending was so masterfully done. It was frightening, unsettling, and tense—yet fulfilling. The tale is captivating, the descriptions are vivid, and the characters are well-developed and engaging. This book was fantastic, and it kept me guessing right up to the very last page. This book has a compelling plot and is incredibly well-edited. The ending of this narrative satisfied me, and it evoked a wide range of feelings. This is a true account of the extremes to which a mother will go to protect her children. To people who will support psychologically strong moms who forgo their comfort and even their lives to safeguard their children, I heartily suggest this captivating book.

Nicely written book about what lengths a woman will go to to protect herself and her children. To make life better. To try and move past abuse and hopefully raise good boys who will not follow in their father's footsteps. At least that is what I got out of it. The two boys, adoptive brothers are doing ok. One is anyway. The other wants to find his birth parents.

This book has a dual timeline, which I always love. It helps me get the backstory and understand why things happen. This book is very good. There are a few things that made me cringe for sure. Abusive relationship warning should be noted.

I liked Lena and I also liked the boys, Jonah and Luke. When Jonah starts asking questions you learn some things that will make you wonder how did this happen. Or why. It's a good book and one I enjoyed.

Thank you #NetGalley, #LynneReeves, #CrookedLaneBooks for this Arc. This is my own true thoughts about this book. I'm so sorry that I just posted my review. Somehow I got sidetracked due to being sick and just forgot. I'm sorry.

5 stars and a very high recommendation.

I enjoyed this tragic story immensely. Lena is a single mother with two children who relocated herself to the wilderness after leaving a violent marriage. After her sons begin to grow older, they start to ask questions about their past that Lena has fought hard to put behind them. As the details unfold and people from Lena’s past come back into play Lena and her boys find themselves in danger once again. I LOVED this story of a mother fighting hard to give her children a better life at all costs and how the truth was finally set free bringing back all of Lena’s fears to light. I will definitely be reading books by this author again.

I was gifted an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

How far will a mother go to protect her children? Dark Rivers to Cross was a captivating story about a mother's love and what happens when your past catches up to you.