Review ~ The Gravity of Birds by Tracy Guzeman

Simon and Schuster
August 2013

The Kessler sisters are as close as two siblings can be, however, during their adolescence this closeness is shattered during a family holiday, when the sisters strike up a friendship with a struggling young artist, Thomas Bayber. By the end of the holiday all three lives are changed irrevocably. Years later, when Bayber, now a renowned but reclusive artist releases a painting entitled the Kessler Sisters, the past which has been long buried is brought back into focus, and secrets which have been hidden are forced into the open.

For the first third of the book nothing much seems to happen, and I was almost on the point of abandoning the book but gradually as the layers of the story start to be peeled away, it becomes more complex, and as the feelings evoked by the divulging of secrets are revealed piece by piece, the novel started to grab my attention.

Overall this is a competent debut novel, with some flashes of brilliance but rather too much drawing out of the story, which I think could have been more succinct in places.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for my ecopy of this book