Review: The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Towner Whitney, the heroine of this novel, comes from a family whose women have the ability to read the future in lace and whose relationships with each other are complicated by abuse and switching around of residences. The ending of the book (which I won't disclose) made me want to go back and read the book again. I liked the voices of Towner and of Rafferty, they were both appealing characters dealing as well as they could with their own demons. (Towner's are a bit more tangible.)

I thought that the structure of the novel, it moves back and forth in time and to some extent place, worked really well for the story. A more linear telling of events would have taken the power out of the ending. I listened to this as an audiobook and found the transition from the present back into Towner's journal a bit jarring, but otherwise I thought it worked well.