REVIEW: DEAD OF WYNTER BY SPENCER SEIDEL

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: PublishingWorks (May 24, 2011)

“Dolly, it’s your mother.” Dolly. Jackie Ruth Wynter had called Alice that for years. The conversation that followed led her right back to the place she had run from for years. Her twin brother, younger by just a minute or so, had been fading, transforming into an image of their drunken, narrow-eyed father. Now her father was dead, and her brother, Chris, missing.

Alice resigns herself to return, helping her mother and the local police with the mystery surrounding the crime. But there are some family secrets her mother would sooner take to the grave than reveal.

As the authorities come closer to solving the mystery of the men in her family, she begins to realize her past life as Alice Wynter is the missing part of the puzzle. But who is searching out the former Alice?

This novel was really divided into two parts - Alice Wynter's story, and her brother Chris Wynter's story. I'd like to talk about each of their parts individually.

Alice's story was pretty straight-forward. She was a woman who had been determined to leave her past behind. She had gotten married, left her hometown and her family drama in an effort to remake herself into someone entirely different. When Alice is forced to face her past after the death of her father, all of the memories that come back to her make us see that she never really left any of it behind, she had just managed to keep it hidden for a while. I wish I could say that I loved Alice's story, but to be honest, it kept repeating itself over and over. It was like, 'yes, we get it, you can't run from your past'. I just felt like the author was hitting us over the head with it too much.

Now, Chris' story, on the other hand, was absolutely amazing. I adored watching young Chris' life unfold and realizing how he grew up to be the man we meet in the very first chapter of the book. I felt that the relationships between Chris and his "friends" were both exciting and terrifying. And I have to say that I adored the way Chris' character changes over the course of his story, and it's done in a way that we change with him. We love with him, hate with him, sympathize with him - I mean, he's just an amazing character!

Putting both stories together, I would say that overall, Seidel has a great page-turner on his hands. The action is exciting, the descriptions so clear that you feel like you are right in the midst of all the excitement, and the characters are excitingly authentic.

5 out of 5 stars

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