The Bay At Midnight by Diane Chamberlain

The Bay at Midnight by Diane Chamberlain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time Taken To Read - 4 days

Publisher - Mira

Blurb From Goodreads

Her family's cottage on the New Jersey shore was a place of freedom and innocence for Julie Bauer--until her seventeen-year-old sister, Isabel, was murdered. It's been more than forty years since that August night, but Julie's memories of her sister's death still shape her world. Now someone from her past is raising questions about what really happened that night. About Julie's own complicity. About a devastating secret her mother kept from them all. About the person who went to prison for Izzy's murder--and the person who didn't.

Faced with questions and armed with few answers, Julie must gather the courage to revisit her past and untangle the complex emotions that led to one unspeakable act of violence on the bay at midnight.



My Review

The story starts in present day with Julie, a very successful author, getting a blast from the past. It stirs up a lot of buried emotions about her sisters death in 1962 and starts a new police investigation into her sisters murder. The story goes between Julie, her mum Maria and her sister Lucy, it jumps between present day and back into the past, mostly the summer of 1962.

Julie states very early on it was partly her fault what happened to her sister but apart from knowing she was killed, we don't know the particulars of what happened. The story slowly unravels and the mysteries unveiled as more details come out. Julie has a few issues to deal with in the present day, her daughter is being distant and difficult, she has mixed feelings about someone from her past and she is suffering from writers block. The story covers all of this but the main focus is the sisters death and will it all come out who was responsible for her death.

The story is a bit slow paced for me as there is so many issues to be dealt with and I was purely focused on the how and why of Julies sisters death. The up to date issues where interesting however I did find Julies daughter to be rather tedious. She went from seemingly fairly grownup and knowing what she wanted to acting very childlike which, I felt, was inconsistent with her character throughout. However some people have stated they felt this added to the realistic nature of a 17 year old.

Overall it was a good read, I didn't love it but I did enjoy it. The chapters are fairly short so you can dip in and out as much as you like, which I always love, and the writing flows making it easy to follow. I do enjoy this authors style and will be tracking down her other books although this is a 3/5 for me this time.

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