David Young, Deacon Price, and Beth Harris live with a dark secret. As children, they survived a religious group’s horrific last days at the isolated mountain Red Peak. Years later, the trauma of what they experienced never feels far behind.
When a fellow survivor commits suicide, they finally reunite and share their stories. Long-repressed memories surface, defying understanding and belief. Why did their families go down such a dark road? What really happened on that final night?
(CW: suicide, brief but intense body gore, blood)
Children of the Red Peak is essentially a character study of three friends who witnessed a horrifically tragic event fifteen years ago. Roughly 2-3 chapters at a time are focused on one of the three characters: David, Beth, or Deacon. About one chapter is centered around their present, while the other flashes back to their time with the Family of the Living Spirit.
The character work with the three protagonists was phenomenal. David has pretty much tried to run and hide away from his past, a trait he even had as a child. Beth has gone into clinical psychology, trying to rationalize her past. And then Deacon has joined a band where he screams and sings of his past.
I also thought the last 1/3 of the book was gripping and suspenseful. I had to keep turning the pages to find out the mystery once and for all. And something I greatly appreciated was that some things are still left in the air. (Pun, um, unintended.)
I did, however, think that the middle of the book lacked a bit in terms of pacing and honestly kind of dragged for me. Don’t get me wrong, the writing was great and so were the main characters. In my opinion, the individual parts worked, but put all together it just felt like stuff we already knew — just reiterated.
I mentioned the “main” characters were great. But what about the others? The book is so focused on the three main ones that we only get their skewed perception of other people. David only knew his mother as an incredibly devout woman who dragged her kids to live with the Family after her divorce. Beth knew her mom as a gossip, and Deacon grew up with a mom who loved music. The minor characters aren’t one-dimensional in the slightest. But as aforementioned, we’re seeing them through skewed lenses, so they can appear at times to be not as well-rounded. And it really works.
Children of the Red Peak is filled with a spirit of mystery and suspense that had me hooked. While I did think the pacing in the middle dragged, the beginning and ending portions were great.
(We received a copy from the publisher.)
(Check here for places to purchase the book.)
