A Mysterious Review of The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day.
Review summary: This novel of suspense has a most intriguing premise but also has several problems executing fully upon it, most notably having a very unlikeable character cast as its lead. Still, despite its drawbacks, the storyline does have merit as a creative whydunit. (Click here for text of full review.)
Our rating:
The Black Hour
Lori Rader-Day
Seventh Street Books (July 2014)
Publisher synopsis: He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why?
All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex — whom she may or may not still love — has moved on.
Enter Nathaniel Barber, a graduate student obsessed with Chicago's violent history. Nath is a serious scholar, but also a serious mess about his first heartbreak, his mother's death, and his father's disapproval. Assigned as Amelia's teaching assistant, Nath also takes on the investigative legwork that Amelia can't do. And meanwhile, he's hoping she'll approve his dissertation topic, the reason he came to grad school in the first place: the student attack on Amelia Emmet.
Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives.
