Go as a River by Shelley Read is such a heartbreaking story of a very strong and resilient young woman. It made me cry several times. There is a lot of historical details about life in the 60's and 70's. The author did a great job researching the material. The narration is wonderful as well.

The main character - a girl named Torie - learned about loss and tragedy early on when she lost her mother, her aunt and her favorite cousin when she was just a young girl. As she grows and learns more about how different a life of a woman is from that of a man, she also must make an impossible choice. That choice, that 1 decision will determine the rest of her life.

This is a beautiful book and a beautiful story that strongly reminded me of Kristin Hannah's storytelling. I definitely recommend it! I am looking forward to more books of Shelley Read.

This is a wonderfully lyric coming of age story about a young woman who creates a life for herself against the odds.

Our story revolves around a 12 yr old who girl who works on her family's peach farm. In a twist of fate she meets a boy on her afternoon walk one day and her life is forever altered.

This book examines the predjudices of the era and explores forbidden love and what people will do to survive.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the audio ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

The narration was absolutely perfect. I felt every emotion the writer wanted to convey. This was a beautiful, soulful and sad story about loss and regret.
I cried at the end.

Beautifully written! Debut author! The title is perfect for this book.

The cadence and writing of this book is perfect for the story.

I'm really not sure how to write a review for this book. It really has captured my heart.

The audiobook was narrated by Cynthia Farrell who did a wonderful job.

Thank you to NetGalley for approving my request to review Go as a River by Shelley Read in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to the publisher Spiegel & Grau by OrangeSky Audio for approving my request to review the advance read/listen copy.

Highly recommended and looking forward to future novels by Shelley Read.

I really wish there were an Authors Note regarding how Shelley Read came to write Go as a River.

Go As a River follows Victoria from her young days growning up on her families peach farm to her uprooting the peach tress and moving them to a different town in Colorado. Victoria meets and falls in love with a young man Will, who is a Native American. Will is brutilly murder by her brother and his friend one night. Vitctoria then finds herself in a family way and is unable to let her dad about it. Victoria decides to keep her pregnancy a secret until she can no longer hide it. She then packs what she needs and heads to the little hut that she and Will would meet. Knowing that she can't take care of her newborn son, Victoria leaves him in the backseat of a car that has parked by the river to have a picnic. This is a very good book and I would defintly recommend to our book club book. This books has so many topics wrapped up in one book. Interracial relastionships, adoption, family bonds, Vietnam War, drug abuse. These are all great topics in a book to discuss as a group.

An incredibly moving and at times heartbreaking story of a young woman's life growing up in a small Colorado town. Life on her family's peach tree farm following the Second World War is often lonely for Victoria (Torrie), especially after her mother dies and she's left with only her father and brother for company. When a mysterious Indigenous boy comes to town, Torrie can't help but befriend him leading to a forbidden love that ends with fatal consequences.

Told over the span of decades, we get to see just how much strength one woman has in the face of incredible loss and the sacrifices she's willing to make in order to save the ones she loves. Ultimately a story about motherhood, loss, and love. I couldn't put this one down and highly recommend it for fans of books like Where the crawdad sings. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter. A tragic and uplifting novel of love and loss, family and survival—and hope

Go As a River is a story about forbidden love, a mother's toughest choice, an adoption. Read's writing is beautifully descriptive. I could picture the mountains and wilderness so easily and almost taste those Nash peaches. stole the show for me. Some parts of the books reminded me a little bit of Where The Crawdads Sing, The Great Alone and Great Circle. Maybe because all of these books have a similar theme going. They are all tragic stories and they are about perseverance and survival no matter the cost. The story spans decades from the 40s to the 70s. It is an engrossing and moving tale. I cannot exactly pinpoint why it is not a 5 star read for me. I wanted more from Inga's POV, more about Lukas growing up. It is getting great reviews and I think I am in the minority.


Torie is a motherless teenager and falls in love with a native American boy named Wilson Moon. Their love is doomed from the beginning. After Torie loses Will in a bloodchilling way, and finds herself pregnant she has to leave the only home she's ever known and learn to survive. But she has to make the hardest decision for her baby boy and leaves her with another mother. Inga raises baby Moon as her own. Torie turns back home to find her father sick. After her father passes away, Torie sells the land to the government. But she cannot bring herself to let the orchard stay under dam water so she finds a botany professor and carries the orchard one tree at a time to a new location and starts a new life there. She finally makes friends and years later lets her friend in on her big secret.

The audiobook production was satisfying. I just wished the narrator had a younger sounding voice for young Torie.

Sorry, this book is boring and simple, it's slow and lacks a hook, should be marketed as contemporary fiction along with Taylor Jenkins Reid and Frederick Bachmann.

This will be very popular, but need to get the marketing right, this is a basic book for white people.

Thank you so much to Spiegel & Grau by OrangeSky Audio for the ALC!

WOW- this was such a moving and heartbreaking story! I'd highly recommend this for fans of THE GREAT ALONE or WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING. It just gave me those comforting vibes!

The story is mainly focused around Victoria who is as strong as she is brave. She endured hardship after hardship and made decisions that broke my heart. Every other character was well portrayed and so unique. I wish we could have had more time with some of them and learned more about their backstory or had chapters from their perspectives.

Ultimately, my only complaint would be that I wanted this story to go on and on! There is so much of her life packed in here that sometimes I feel like it flew too fast. That being said, I will still easily recommend to this book to everyone!

The narrator did an absolutely fabulous job as well!

4.5 stars rounded up to 5 for GR

This was a well written debut about a young woman that experiences so much heartache and pain. Set in 40’s Victoria Nash grows up in Southern Colorado at a peach orchard that has been passed down through two generations. After her mother dies Victoria becomes caregiver to her heartbroken father, bitter uncle and angry brother. She fixes all the meals, does the laundry, keeps the house and tends to many other chores on their farm. One day she crosses paths with a young man, Wilson Moon, and her life changes forever. This is her tragic story written with such passion that I was completely immersed in the story. I grew up in Colorado and was immediately transported there, all of the scenery and terrain were depicted perfectly. I only wished there had been more. I wanted to hear more about the characters and wanted to know what happened to them. It felt a tad bit rushed at the end. Regardless this was a solid debut and I am looking forward to more books by Shelley Read in the future.
The audiobook was narrated well and did justice to the story. Thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

4 ⭐️

#NetGalley #GoasaRiver

GO AS A RIVER

Shelley Read

2/28/23

I listened to this amazing debut and I was captured into the story so very quickly!! I highly recommend this one!!

Torie is the only female on the family peach farm in Colorado. She lives with her father, brother and uncle who was injured in the war. A chance meeting with Wilson will change her life.

This is a book of devastation, heartbreak, family and so much more!!

This stunning debut is out on 2/28 and I highly recommend!! It will be a top read of 2023 for me!!!

Thanks to Spiegel & Grau by OrangeSky Audio for the copy of this ALC!

This is a really tender, beautiful story set in rural Colorado starting in 1948. Victoria works on her family’s peach farm and one day falls in love with Wilson Moon, a Native American who is NOT welcome in the community and actually gets placed in wanted ads around town. This story blends a coming of age story with motherhood, acceptance, racism, land rights, adoption, residential schools, family drama, nature, and friendship. It’s pieced together incredibly well to make it lyrical, beautiful, heartbreaking, and a really special story spanning decades.

Read if you:
- enjoy impactful historical fiction
- are a mother
- want your heart to be both broken and squeezed

I think the audio is well done on this, but I definitely missed some things and actually went back and reread the physical book. I think I would suggest physical over audio on this one, but loved the story!

To convince you to pick this up, I want to highlight the breathtaking writing that drew me in from the very first sentence.

• “…I’ve come to understand how the exceptional lurks beneath the ordinary, like the deep and mysterious world beneath the surface of the sea.”
• “Strength, I had learned, was like this littered forest floor, built of small triumphs and infinite blunders, sunny hours followed by sudden storms that tore it all down. We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best.”
• “…my rising wisdom understood that I must carry my whole past alongside the new space I had created in myself for hope.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, friends! This story bleeds wisdom, pain, hope, and what it means to be a woman, lover, and mother. The plot drifted in pace at times (dare I say, like a river?), but the emotional impact never waivered. I know for a fact that this book will speak to so many friends on here! 🤍

4.5 stars

This is a streamlined and lovely piece of historical fiction, featuring a developed woman character and the series of struggles that she faces because of who she is, who she loves, and where and when she exists. The narrator of the audio version makes this already engaging work even more vivid.

Victoria, the m.c., is the lone woman in her family, and her sense of isolation is palpable. She's responsible for taking care of the residual men, and there are no other women around to prepare her for the changes her body and general existence will force her to take on as she matures. It's important to know that despite this setup, there are two critical factors about Victoria: (1) she is no damsel in distress and (2) the most vital supporting characters are other women. In both of these ways, she bucks some of the expectations that can make (especially historical) novels infuriating.

I came into this novel with no awareness of the author and limited awareness of any details beyond the genre, and I was pleased to find that I really couldn't make myself stop listening to this. This isn't the kind of historical m.c. who's doing heroic, high profile acts; this is the story of a typical woman with some atypical (for any human) grit, resilience, and gumption, and it's a pleasure to root for her and read her story.

For sure, I'll be looking forward to more from this author.

What begins as a forbidden love story turns into a harrowing tale of one woman's fierce independence and survival, despite her doomed family, town, and the farm which has been in her family for generations. I was so glad Victoria didn't get "rescued" by some man and did everything herself and with the help of experts, friends, and hired hands. She is both sympathetic and inspiring while all the time thinking of herself as a coward. The story was brutal, beautiful, and came wonderfully full circle, granting everyone the hope they deserve. Only the most unaffected reader could make it through without craving peaches.

If there was ever a book written that captured the essence of what I love about fiction, it would be this. GO AS A RIVER by debut author Shelley Read is truly a modern classic in the making.

The story follows Victoria, a 17 year old girl living in small town Colorado in the 1950s. In the wake of losing her mother, her days are spent caring for callous men. She finds solace farming peaches her family has done for generations. As the steady sense of foreboding gives way and tragedy strikes, Victoria must forge her own path. Over the course of 20 years, she must navigate unexpected friendships, deep-rooted sorrow, and grace for the girl she once was.

I knew from the prologue that I had something special on my hands. The writing is lyrical, the plot is poignant, and the characters will make a home in your heart and stay awhile. Shelley Read’s prose is simply breathtaking and her ruminations on motherhood, identity, and the people and places that make up a home are beautifully timeless.

I loved Cynthia Farrell's narration for this spectacular story. She captured Victoria's journey so beautifully and brought the story to life in my ears.

If you’re looking for a striking story that has the *it* factor, let GO AS A RIVER sweep you away. Your heart will break and mend a thousand times over and I promise you’ll be better for it.

RATING: 5/5
PUB DATE: February 28, 2023

Review will be posted to www.instagram.com/kellyhook.readsbooks in advance of publication date

Thank you Spiegel & Grau by OrangeSky Audio and Netgalley for this audio. I was really facinated by the strenght of the woman. Life is a bitch and for someone even more diificult. What decide what turn what turn your life will take, who will helo you and who will not.. really somwthing deep and unforgetteble.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to review!
Rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being excellent)
Quality of writing: 5
Pace: 4
Plot development: 4
Characters: 4
Enjoyability: 4
Ease of Reading: 4
Narrator: 4

Overall rating: 4 out of 5

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of Go as a River by Shelley Read.

This is one of those books that I'm going to hold to my chest with my mascara running and I'll be proclaiming "this book stomped every inch of my heart to bits, it literally destroyed me, read it!" But for real, if you were a fan of The Snow Child, Crawdads, or any quiet books that also screams heartbreak and healing, this is for you.

It is the 1940's in Iola Colorado and Victoria has just met Wilson Moon. He is gentle, mysterious, handsome and kind. But he also has the wrong skin tone, making him an unwelcome visitor in town. But while Wilson lays low, Victoria and he establish a deep connection, but there is no possible way of knowing just how dramatically Torie's life will change because of it.

I won't lie, this is not a lighthearted read, it's full of tragedy and cruelty, so please treat yourself with care while reading. But I can also promise you that it's laced with exquisite hope and beauty throughout. Human wickedness has no bounds, but thankfully, neither does human kindness and selflessness. I sobbed giant ugly tears at the end of this book, and it will be a long time before I ever forget it.