Call Me Evie

December 15, 2018
A 17-year-old girl struggles to piece together the truth about a violent incident she can barely recall.When Kate shows up in rural New Zealand with a man who tells people he's her uncle Jim, she has only the vaguest notion of the danger she's in. Jim has brought her from Melbourne to a seaside town to avoid the police and the social uproar from something she's supposedly done. With a new look and a new name--Jim calls her Evie--Kate tries to recall the evening that changed her life. Jim asks her questions about what she can remember, but he won't allow her to go online, he locks her in her room at night, and he seems to have alerted all the locals that she's mentally unbalanced and not to be trusted. But as Jim grows more paranoid, and Kate more desperate to get back home to Melbourne and face the truth, she must decide whether or not Jim is trying to protect her or drive her to the brink. This debut novel by Pomare sets him up as a writer to watch. There are the kind of plot wobbles that often attend first novels--it may especially frustrate some readers that Pomare uses the cover of Kate's trauma-induced amnesia to withhold vital information that has nothing to do with Kate's memory and everything to do with the author wanting to force a twist. But Pomare's writing is so crisp and his characterizations so spot-on that these tricks are easy to forgive. Readers looking for a page-turner will be happy, but so, too, will those looking for a work with deeper resonances, in this case about gaslighting and the ruthless world of teenagers.Read this one with the lights on, and keep Pomare on your radar.

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February 1, 2019
Seventeen-year-old Evie and a man who instructs her to call him Uncle have fled Australia to a remote village in New Zealand to avoid capture. Something terrible has happened that a disturbed Evie can't remember. The man claims to be trying to help her reclaim her memory, but why does he routinely feed her pills, lock her in her room, and spend so much time in a shed on the property of the dilapidated house where they seek shelter? Such unanswered questions drive the narrative of this very dark novel of psychological suspense, which moves backward and forward in time between the past, which provides clues as to what has happened, and a sinister present that raises more questions than it answers. Why are the villagers so universally antagonistic, for one example? The mood tends to be one note?unrelievedly ominous?and the action is fairly predictable, aside from one big surprise. Nevertheless, suspense fans will find this first novel a satisfying if occasionally frustrating read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2018

Teenage Kate Bennet is locked up in a remote seaside cabin far from her Melbourne home by a man who says that he's protecting her after she did something awful and insists on calling her Evie. Kate cannot remember the night in question, but what she's hearing is not making sense. Debut author Pomare has been long-listed for several writing prizes in Australia.

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