Book Review and Giveaway: Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of charge, from Harper Collins Publishing, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it

Being released today is the second book in the new Dennis Lehane

(of Mystic River fame) Book line for Harper Collins!

Synopsis: It’s the end of summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue collar dockside neighborhood where the East River opens into the bay, and gourmet supermarkets push up against housing projects. June and Val, two fifteen-year-old students at Our Lady of Visitation, are looking for fun. June, full-figured and aware of it, wants to find a party, but Val, sensing the last summer they'll have for simpler pleasures, convinces her friend to take a raft out onto the bay. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Only Val will return, found semi-conscious in the weeds along the shore.

What exactly happened to June that night has reverberations for everyone in Red Hook. With gripping literary prose, Pochoda unfolds the truth of June’s disappearance and the secrets of a community through the lens and lives of five Red Hook residents: Val who returned that night and no longer lives under the shadow of June; a Lebanese bodega owner trolling for information on his own; a teenager from the projects who is just starting to pull himself together after his father’s murder; an alcoholic music teacher confronting his own tragic sins;  and a young man with an unknown past who insinuates himself into the fabric of the neighborhood and may hold the key to several neighborhood mysteries.

You can read an excerpt online!

Review: This was a riveting read- I did not want to put it down until the mystery was solved! The author's mother told her to write what she knew, so she did- living across the street from a bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn, she “began to describe the inhabitants, their interactions the mix of race and age—everything that made the place so strange and, at least to me, wonderful.” She did a wonderful job in bringing Red Hook and Brooklyn to life, to the way different cultures and races mix, interact, and react to each other like oil and water, that floats on the river surrounding them.

The story has many twists that will keep the reader guessing and wondering where it will end. DO NOT read ahead! The tale is in the nuances, the little moments of the community. The subtlities of this story deliver their own narrative that needs to be heard in their correct context. This will more than likely be 'the' book of the Summer, and rightly so! Pick this book up and be transported to neighborhood you soon won't forget!

About the Author:  Ivy Pochoda is the author of The Art of Disappearing and has a BA from Harvard University in English and Classical Greek with a focus on dramatic literature and a MFA from Bennington College in fiction. She is a former professional squash player and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Check out her website for more.


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