Review: The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Summary

Girls started vanishing in the fall, and now winter’s come to lay a white sheet over the horror. Door County, it seems, is swallowing the young, right into its very dirt. From beneath the house on Water Street, I’ve watched the danger swell.

The residents know me as the noises in the house at night, the creaking on the stairs. I’m the reflection behind them in the glass, the feeling of fear in the cellar. I’m tied—it seems—to this house, this street, this town.

I’m tied to Maggie and Pauline, though I don’t know why. I think it’s because death is coming for one of them, or both.

All I know is that the present and the past are piling up, and I am here to dig.I am looking for the things that are buried.

My thoughts

After reading the epigraph of this I already knew that I was going to like this one. Not only did I like the writing style a lot but I also got the feeling that this was going to be a good one. And it is.

Interesting POV

Part of this story is told by an unknown POV. You don’t know who is telling the story, just that it is something paranormal, something ghost-like. I had my suspicions about who this is pretty early but couldn’t be 100% sure until the very end. I was always wondering why it’s important to tell this part and what the purpose of it would be.
When I reached the end and knew exactly what this was all about, it made me want to read the whole story again already. I wanted to see how it’s like to read it with this certain knowledge.

The “train crash appeal”

There was this part of the story that felt like  a train crash you know is coming and you can’t do anything about it. You know it’s going to get ugly but you can’t look away. The worst/most emotional part was that I didn’t expect another train to come and crash right into the first one and to make a far bigger mess than the first one. Even though I had suspicions that something like that second one might happen, I was still shocked about the how, when and who. Jodi Lynn Anderson sure knows how to write a beautiful but very sad story.

Beautiful atmosphere

I like this kind of atmosphere a lot. In a way it’s quiet and calm. Even being about girls vanishing it was always this slow and quiet story.
Interesting is that on the one hand it’s not a story that’s full of feelings but on the other hand made ME have all these. There was no need in describing them, no need for rage when someone was cheating on someone else, no need for grief when another girl vanished. Jodi didn’t need to write about the characters feeling that way because I felt it for them. There were parts of the story that made me really angry, especially about the way Maggie is sometimes treated, but she herself is a character that suppressed these feelings.

A slow paced story

Fitting the atmosphere, the is slow paced. Even with girls vanishing, these happenings are not told in action packed scenes. This is the story of the everyday life of a girl living in a small town that’s rather boring, making new friends.
In this case I couldn’t imagine the story otherwise, the slow pace perfectly fits the story and makes this a beautiful read without ever getting boring.

Overall

I liked this calm, melancholic story a lot. It lacks thrilling moments and surprises, but that’s not what it needs. This is just a beautiful and very sad story. Jody Lynn Anderson, with her wonderful writing style, has a unique way of telling the story of a city girl moving to a small town and I hope we get to read a lot more like this one.