She Treads Softly: She Never Left

Friday, November 12, 2021

She Never Left

She Never Left by CM Harris
11/25/21; 400 pages
HarperCollins

She Never Left by CM Harris is a so-so supernatural tale.

Jane and TJ are cousins who return to their hometown for a 20th reunion. By this town are dense woods called "the thicket" filled with a fungus that glows and can actively effect and infect humans. There is also a stalker named Lincoln who has had a crush on Jane since high school. The novel is filled with the two facing trauma and addictions from their past and the cause of their problems, something that might still be operating today and getting worse.

Chapters alternate between present day and twenty plus years earlier. There really never is any good reason produced for attending a 20th high school reunion in a creepy small town that you were happy to leave and where people seem to disappear on a regular basis, unless it is the psychedelic mushrooms. One of the most glaring problems with the whole novel is that all the characters talk as if they are still in high school in both time lines. This is more a science fiction tale and a drug trip rather than a mystery about disappearing people from a small town. Normally I can enjoy science fiction, but this wasn't quite it.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.