‘A raspy shriek shattered my bravado.’
In her snappy first sentence, Karen Hulene Bartell hooks readers of her latest novel ‘Indigo’, introduces them to the main character and sets the tone and atmosphere of the story.
This reinforces Lisa Dawn MacDonald’s stunning cover in black, white and indigo, which evokes the book’s title.
Jilted only days before her wedding and left with heavy debts, Raluca Olson struggles with the double griefs of betrayal and debt. Providentially, she inherits a cabin from an unknown relative and shifts from Chicago to Birch Lake, Wisconsin. The day after she arrives, she rescues a small bedraggled puppy. Not only dog people readers should love Indigo, the name Raluca gives him for his indigo eyes, but all readers should empathise with both his need of Raluca and hers of him.
When Raluca meets property manager, Dylan McCoombs, an almost instant attraction ignites between them. Before long, she is embroiled in a quest to learn about her benefactor, unknown to her, but known well to Dylan and others.
Learning about windigos, that are rooted in indigenous culture, fascinates Raluca. All fear the Windigo, a mixture of a monster/crazed human/psychosis/cannibal. Did Raluca belong to a family carrying the Windigo gene? If she marries and has children, are any sons at risk of being a windigo?
Mutilated slain animals and then abducted children fuel the townspeople’s fear and hatred of windigos and a family, Raluca’s family, for its connection to them.
In the midst of turmoil, Raluca’s ex-fiance Bill appears, complicating her life, including her relationship with Dylan.
Many of Hulene Bartell’s descriptions are written in a literary style close to poetry and appeal to multi-senses. For instance, I followed the road as it dipped and twisted through the wetlands, rose again between bordering alfalfa fields speckled with blue gypsyweed stalks, then dead ended at a railroad track.
In bold strokes Hulene Bartell also sketches minor characters, such as Angie, a real estate agent. Her stiff smile stopped short of a sneer. Readers will readily identify with Raluca as she copes with Angie and other questionable estate agents trying to get her to accept a low offer. Hulene Bartell even shares tips for renovating and selling houses.
Towards the end, the action speeds up at such a pace, the reader has to keep reading. Then, at the end of the last chapter, sated, and with all ends tied up, they rest back after reading a happy ever after ending.
But is it? No, there is an Epilogue, and once more they find themselves on a cliff-hanger, adrenalin racing.
As a reader, this reviewer likes to end on an up-beat where all is well with the world, not teetering on a cliff-hanger. After staying up late to finish the book, instead of going to bed in a feel-good mood, she felt she had finished one book and had started the sequel. Nothing wrong if the Epilogue had started Book 2 of a series, but, in this reviewer’s opinion, the book’s ending should have been at the end of the last chapter, and the epilogue omitted.
Hopefully, Hulene Bartell will follow ’Indigo’ with a sequel.
A 328 pp slightly smaller than A5 sized paperback and e-book published by The Wild Rose Press, ‘Indigo’ will be released on June 10. It is already available for pre-order on the Internet. This reviewer received an ARC of ‘Indigo’ from the author, but the opinions expressed here are her own. Highly recommended with a 5 out of 5 rating.
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