Reviewer Alison Manley looks at my new novel from an angle I couldn’t have predicted. I’m reprinting part of it here. A starred review!

February 5, 2024 by Alison Manley

The first thought I had about Far Creek Road by Lesley Krueger was that it was made so perfectly for me, an adult who had fallen in love with Judy Blume novels as a kid and teen. That’s what Far Creek Road reminded me of: tender, relatable stories about kids who lived normal lives and had millions of questions and big imaginations… And so I was immediately fond of this book, which is told from the viewpoint of Tink (real name: Mary Alice), a precocious youngest child, who arrived in her family well after her siblings were born…

Krueger sets the stage with a happy, comfortable, conventional childhood story while planting the seeds for a darker turn by the end. The worries and persecution in the adult world slowly begin to leak into Tink’s life, a Canadian version of McCarthyism targeting her best friend Norman’s parents and resulting in bullying and shunning of both her and Norman at school. Tink is still a kid, but she gleans enough to give us a strong understanding of the secrets and deceptions the episode reveals in the neighbourhood – and the ultimate strange, unsettling conclusion to the whole situation.

Far Creek Road is a wonderfully written novel, with full and rich characters, a delightful narrator, and very much the adult version of those Judy Blume stories we loved as kids. I was sucked into this novel right away, and Krueger’s ability to immerse me inside of Tink’s mind was impressive… It was a treat to be able to kick off my reading year with Far Creek Road out of the gate.

This is a TMR Starred Review!

You can read the whole review here.