Review of Laydin Michaels' novel Bitter Root

Laydin Michaels has a knack for creating interestingly creepy villains, and characters whose lives their actions affect profoundly.

In her first novel, Forsaken, the villain’s companion was a young child who the two protagonists fought to get away from him and to protect. In Bitter Root, it’s one of the main characters, Adi Bergeron, whose life is shaped by the abusive stepfather she escaped.

The two novels are very different in some ways. Forsaken is a police procedural, where one of the protagonists is chasing a serial killer while falling for one of his victim’s friends. Bitter Root is a story about a curious reporter, Griffith McNaulty, who becomes interested in Adi’s past when assigned to write an article about the restaurant where Adi now works as a cook.

But to me, the novels had plenty in common. Griffith isn’t an up and coming state trooper, but she is uncovering a mystery. Adi isn’t a child, but she struggles to live with the fear she still has of her stepfather and build a new life without him. Bitter Root isn’t set in rural Texas, instead in the Louisiana bayou.

But just as in Forsaken, the setting is vivid, unique, and central to the characters and plot. Although I’ve never been to either place, the novels made me feel like I was there, immersed in the culture and invested in the people.

The pacing of the romance is much better this time around. In Forsaken, the suspenseful parts of the story took over in some places, overshadowing the budding romance. In this novel, since Griffith is trying to uncover Adi’s secrets, there’s a natural flow between Griffith’s curiosity about who Adi is and her budding romantic interest. Adi’s stepfather’s shadow over her new life works very well as a source of tension -- on the one hand, she has a deep need for Griffin’s comfort and companionship, and on the other, feels understandable terror that Griffin’s nosiness will doom them both.

I also  liked that in this novel, Adi herself is the one hiding from the villain. I loved the child in Forsaken and her relationship with the protagonists, but in Bitter Root, the looming prospect of a confrontation between Adi and her abuser felt more immediate and intense, because it directly affected one of the characters in whose head we see the events.

I enjoyed Forsaken and was looking forward to this novel as well. It was worth the wait. While it's different from Forsaken in several ways, I would definitely recommend it.

Review of Laydin Michaels' novel Forsaken

I decided to read Laydin Michaels’ novel Forsaken after watching this interview.

Two things intrigued me. One, I was interested in reading a novel where one of the protagonists had social anxiety, and two, I am a sucker for stories with interesting villains. I knew from the video that parts of the story get inside the head of a serial killer, so I had to give the novel a try. I’m happy to say it delivered on both counts.

The story begins as a romance between Blake, a teacher who struggles to overcome her social anxiety, and Lindsay, a state trooper who dreams of becoming a Texas Ranger. But their budding romance is cut short when a serial killer murders Blake’s best friend, badly injures both Blake and Lindsay, and kidnaps Blake. Worse, they discover that the killer travels with a young child who has witnessed his murders. Lindsay fights to track down and capture the killer and Blake vows to -- somehow! -- save the child.

The romance is sweet and cute, if a little slow-moving. Blake struggles to work through her anxiety, take initiative, and show Lindsay how she feels. Workaholic Lindsay has always put her dream before dating, and wrestles with whether to embrace her feelings or keep Blake at arm’s length.

The suspense picks up as soon as we meet our killer. I couldn’t put the book down, even though I’d decided just before that it was slow. Once he comes on the scene, things happen fast and furious.

And that’s where Blake’s social anxiety, and its effect on the story, gets fascinating. We meet the serial killer before Blake does. So when Blake goes outside on the fateful day he murders her best friend, we know something is terribly wrong. Blake feels nervous and scared for no apparent reason and quite sensibly attributes this to her anxiety acting up. But we know that, in this case, something is about to happen -- which makes the suspense more powerful than it might have been otherwise.

And which made the story into a page-turner. I was on the edge of my seat from that point until the end of the book.

I found it fascinating to experience the events of the story, which would traumatize and horrify anyone, from the perspective of a character I knew was already prone to anxiety. It kept me invested and made me want to see when and how Blake would manage to be strong, and when things would be especially difficult for her to handle.

I also liked how the story handled injuries and danger. The characters aren’t superheroes, and Lindsay gets laid up pretty seriously by a concussion. There are real consequences when she tries to ignore it and put Catching The Bad Guy over her own health. That makes the protagonists feel like real people, not just Brave Heroes. Both women are brave, as is the little girl, but they’re also regular people, clearly in over their heads.

I also liked the villain. At first I worried that he would be an uncomfortable caricature -- he’s both a veteran with PTSD and a fundamentalist Christian, and I worried about stereotypes of either or both. But his experiences, values, and ideals mixed together in ways that made him a unique and creepy character. And his relationship to and feelings about the child made him more complex than Just Pure Evil. And just like I thought I would seeing the video, I really liked seeing things from his perspective. I found that much more interesting than just watching other characters try to piece him together.

The story is weak in a few places, though. While the chemistry between Blake and Lindsay is fun and hot, the romance felt a bit clunky. I would have liked to see more of the characters growing into their comfort with one another, and to see it spread out more throughout the story.

There were also a few bits of the plot that I felt iffy about.

(spoilers below) 

For one thing, the killer disposes of bodies in a unique way. The novel nods to this by telling us the police missed it because the bodies are spread out over different jurisdictions, but I had a hard time believing no one would notice. For another, the police eventually catch the killer when the child falls ill. When faith healing doesn’t work, the killer takes her to a hospital, and is promptly apprehended.  I quite liked that his compassion ultimately triumphed over his warped “mission from God." But it also felt a bit anticlimactic.

(end spoilers) 

All in all, though, I enjoyed the novel and would recommend it. It snuck up on me and got me so invested I felt compelled to go back and read more any time I tried to put it down.

If you’re interested in a novel about cute lesbians whose romance becomes an exciting story about police catching a serial killer -- or any of the aforementioned things, really! -- go ahead and give Forsaken a read.