Ruth O

The Things That Keep Us Here was a very enjoyable novel that kept me engrossed cover to cover. This is an apocalyptic book where life-as-we-know-it is turned upside down during a flu pandemic, and one family’s experiences are developed. The information in it is very timely and the science is accurate, unlike other books I’ve read of this genre. That said, there are several functional questions I had as I was reading that almost took me out of the context; for instance, why didn’t the water pipes freeze? Additionally, the epilogue seemed rushed without complete answers to all of the questions. However, I still enjoyed the book and recommend it!

The book opens with a suicide and a short note: ‘He isn’t who you think he is’, written to the victim’s adult daughter. The rest of the book is the daughter’s present-day actions with flashbacks to her haunted youth, as she searches for who ‘he’ is. Along the way we learn how she came to be the person she is today. I read this book in one day, as it caught me from the first chapter and I couldn’t put it down. Some of it was predictable, but there were still surprises that kept me on edge. Character development occurred slowly, but it all made sense by the end. I recommend this for a quick but not easy read, as it deals with family issues that are very disturbing.

Music is a theme that runs through this book, appropriate for ‘The Music Teacher’! It’s about music, but not about music. The heroine has a lot of personal issues that intertwine with the music. The book had a bit too much angst for my taste, and the writing was in choppy sentences which is a style that generally doesn’t appeal to me. I finished it (luckily it was a short book), but it dragged on for a while without getting to the point. I wouldn’t read it again, nor would I recommend it to a friend.