When The Stars Go Dark, Paula McLain, author; Marin Ireland, narrator
I have enjoyed other books by this author, but this one, not so much. While I sympathize, perhaps even empathize, with the author and her own history of abuse, I think too much emotion and too much analysis made the book less of a mystery and more of a self-help book designed to help the author and perhaps other females, who have experienced some kind of abuse, to reconcile their pain so they can go forward and not remain stuck in the past holding onto the unpleasant memories.
A Detective, Anna Hart, carrying lots of baggage and suffering from some sort of recent trauma, with no place else to go, returns to her childhood home hoping to work through and solve her own problems. Her husband does not want her to return home until he can process what they are dealing with, as well. While in town, she reconnects with old acquaintances, one of them who is now the local sheriff, and she becomes embroiled in the kidnapping investigation he is conducting. However, she seems to take the lead, and he seems to be assisting her as the investigation progresses. This is unrealistic.
Anna was raised by a wonderful foster family who loved her dearly and taught her survival skills. However, Anna’s life was filled with tragedies that she never processed fully. As a detective, Anna was a specialist in missing persons cases. Every case, though, became personal to her and she grew more and more obsessed with the victims because of her own past history. Her objective was always to reduce the personal pain of others, which ultimately brought personal pain to her own loved ones.
As the story progresses with the harrowing stories of kidnap victims, young girls who are sexually abused and sometimes murdered, it grows very melodramatic and less mysterious. The dialogue is filled with too many simplistic explanations and too much psychoanalysis, reducing the novel to a kind of self-help book or piece of chick lit. Introducing psychics into the narrative was plausible, until the end when she becomes more of a fortune teller.
McLain seems to feel that she has to save us all from ourselves. The book is more about her thoughts and feelings and so sometimes masquerades as a kind of memoir which is helping her to solve her own problems and move on. I hope it worked for her; the book did not work for me. I expected more. I think she let her emotions and history guide the book, rather than a rational presentation of the suffering of the victims and their families. It seemed to focus more on the detective’s suffering (aka McLain), than anything else.
The author also tried to use symbolism to make a point, and the one at the end felt totally contrived. The raven simply felt like a bird to me, doing what a bird does rather than indicating that Anna should fly off as it did.
The dialogue was cloying.Some of the language seemed inappropriate, as with the description of “ass-kicking” boots. The coincidences, as with Anna discovering that the missing girl who was adopted, had an “unknown” brother who lived nearby, seemed implausible. The novel was redeemed slightly by the research that went into the book. It was informative and instructive as the investigation tactics were presented. The idea of who might be guilty often being the one you least expected it to be, was also interesting, because sometimes the person most guilty is the one most adept at hiding that fact. Still, when I was forced to suspend disbelief, at times, the novel went off the rails for me. Since the issue of missing persons is so real, including the unreal, trivialized it.