Blog Tour & Giveaway: What The Valley Knows by Heather Christie

What The Valley Knows
Heather Christie
Publication date: January 25th 2018
Genres: Romance, Young Adult

Millington Valley is a quintessential small Pennsylvania town: families go back generations. Football rules. Kids drink while adults look the other way. High school is a whirlwind of aspiration and rivalry, friendship and jealousy.

When smart and pretty Molly Hanover moves to town and attracts the attention of the football team’s hero, Wade Thornton—a nice guy with a bad drinking habit—longtime friendships are threatened and a popular cheerleader tries to turn the school against Molly.

The young couple’s future is shattered when Wade, drunk, wrecks his truck and Molly is thrown through the windshield. She wakes from a coma to find her beauty marred and her memory full of holes. As she struggles to heal, she becomes sure that something terrible happened before the accident. And there is somebody in the valley who doesn’t want her to remember.

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My Review:

3 Out Of 5 Stars

Genre: Mystery, Teen--

Molly and her mom Ann have decided to start fresh in a new town, to escape the sadness of their past. When an opportunity to move into a great house presents itself to Ann, she jumps at the chance to give her daughter a home, but she has no idea that the landlord has boundary issues. Meanwhile, Molly has caught the eye of the star quarterback, which causes her to be the target of bullying from the girls at school. Just when things start to seem almost perfect, tragedy strikes and Molly's life is forever changes.

I will admit that I had a hard time getting into this story. I thought the story started out kind of slow and felt a little disjointed when I first started reading. The flow was a little jumpy and time would go very slow and then jump to some distant time in the future where things were vastly different, so I was a little lost for the first like 80 pages of the book. The story did end up picking up after the accident occurs and now when I look back on it I can see that everything had been building, with increased tension and stress. It was a pretty sad book though, dealing with some awful topics and I did feel pretty down when I read the story- even the ending has a dose of realism and sadness thrown in. I do really enjoy a solid mystery and this did have some unexpected twists and turns that were surprising. There was also a love story that ran through the mystery, one more about self discovery and self- acceptance as well.

The story was narrated by three different voices- Molly the shy, uncertain girl who wants love; Ann the supportive mother who just wants the best for her daughter; and Wade the star quarterback who has been an alcoholic since age 13 that always gets what he wants. For the most part I did not connect to the characters, I read about them, watched their actions, but I never empathized with them. I never really got to see what their motivations were and the relationships I never saw evolve they just were. The plot was able to keep me going because I wanted to know more, discover the secrets, not really the characters.

Overall this was a very different type of mystery YA mystery about how to deal with a terrible situation and the aftermath of a crime. The story itself was a fast read, I read the book in only a few hours, so it can be something to read on a lazy day or when you are in a time crunch or just want to jump into a book to solve.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book​.

Author Bio:

Heather Christie grew up in rural Pennsylvania and, at age seventeen, took off for New York City in hopes of becoming a movie star. Flash forward several decades, a couple degrees, a bunch of cats, two kids and one husband later, she's back in Pennsylvania writing her heart out and chasing dreams again. She loves to read, run, drink tea, and make Sunday dinner. Follow her blog at www.HeatherChristieBooks.com and say “hello” on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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