DESIRE LINES (P.S.)

Her absence is a presence, ghostly and haunting, touching all who knew her. It is impossible that she disappeared, inconceivable that she will never return. She is at once nowhere and everywhere, a constant shadow, illusory and insubstantial, her life an unkept promise, a half-remembered dream.”After the high school graduation formal ceremony, a close group of newly minted grads meet to hang out. One of them is never seen again. Jennifer left the gathering insisting that she was going and that she would be fine. Why did they let her go? How could they let her slip away? The collective guilt and sense of responsibility for Jennifer’s disappearance has haunted all of the friends in some way for years. As their 10 year H.S. reunion nears everyone knows that "Jennifer’s sudden absence destroyed the fabric that had held everyone together."Newly divorced Kathryn is returning home to Bangor, Maine planning to live with her mother until she figures out what to do next. Having avoided ‘home” for 10 years she has a lot of people to reconnect with. "She might be going home, but it felt to her as if she was heading into new and unfamiliar territory.” She had always thought of Jennifer as her best friend and has struggled with her disappearance; she worries that she had failed Jennifer in their friendship. Kathryn agrees to write a piece for the Bangor Newspaper reviewing the facts to the missing persons case to put things in order and hope, "Somebody has to know something…. one of them might be keeping a secret. Who was it? What did that one know? "The story moves at a slow pace with much extraneous information. While I didn’t feel like quitting, there were times when I was feeling bored and was calling for the editor to have done his/her job! That being said, I hung in there, I wanted to know what happened to Jennifer and I’m glad I did. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

ITIS THE BOOK MY WIFE WANTED AND IT WAS DELIVERED ON TIME.

I love Christina Baker Kline’s books. She has such talent in weaving a story and making it so readable. This book was no exception.This is a story about a woman, recently divorced, who returns to her small hometown in Maine. At the end of her senior year in high school, her best friend goes missing. Now, ten years later, she is still haunted by this unsolved case. She is a journalist, and the local newspaper assigns her the job of writing an article about the case. Her article touches a nerve and puts her in danger and makes her question how well any of us really know another person.This was a captivating story with strong characters. It kept me interested. I didn’t give it 5 stars because I did feel that there were some unrealistic actions and the resolution was not totally complete. But it was still a really good book!

This was the second book I've read by this author (I'm currently working on the fourth). That would imply, I suppose, that I like her writing. And I do. Basically. I usually find her writing to be excellent, her story-telling such that it draws the reader in, her characterization good enough to let me know who people are by their actions rather than by just being told what kind of people they are. But I had the same complaint about Desire Lines that I had with the first book of hers that I read (The Way Life Should Be): I felt I got dumped at the end of the story, that loose ends weren't tied up, that conflicts weren't really resolved, and that I didn't get satisfactory answers to the questions Baker Kline so carefully crafted to make us care about the story. I won't be a spoiler by saying what happened in the disappointing ending to this story, but it would be hard to do that anyway because it really didn't explain anything to find out whodunnit because we never learned why the person did it or how. Maybe real life is like that. Maybe we don't get to neatly tie up all the loose ends in our lives by the end of our stories. Maybe we die without explanations for all the mysteries in our lives. But this is a BOOK, not real life, and as a reader, I felt cheated out of the satisfaction of being able to close the book and say, "Oh, I get it, now it makes sense." So while I still think Christina Baker Kline is an excellent writer, knows how to use language to tell her story, knows how to create three-dimensional characters, etc., I do not think she's especially good at coming up with endings for her stories or motives for her characters' often odd behavior. I keep buying her books because I keep expecting better from her, but she's not going to get too many more chances from me.

This is my first book by Christina Baker Kline but it won't be the last. This is a story about a young woman who comes home to Bangor, Maine after losing both her marriage and her job. I don't think that I would be exaggerating if I described her as lost. After arriving in Bangor, Kathryn is asked to write a series of articles for the local newspaper about a girl named Jennifer who left her friends on graduation night to walk home and was never seen or heard from again.The person who asks her to write these articles is a former classmate who is now an editor at the newspaper and along with Kathryn was a part of a close group of 6 friends who went through school together. Jennifer was also a part of this group and Kathryn viewed her as her best friend. It was this group that Jennifer left to walk home on graduation night 10 years prior never to be seen again.This book held my interest throughout and it didn't escape my attention that it could be said that both women could be deemed as lost. Although I guessed who and how the story would end rather early on it didn't stop me from enjoying the journey the author took me on.Some have said that this was very average read but I would disagree. Give this book a try. I think it is well worth your time!