In Search of the Rose Notes

Starred review from May 30, 2011
Arsenault follows her well-received debut, The Broken Teaglass, with a compelling psychological mystery, told from the alternating point of view of the 20-something narrator and her confused preteen self. In 1990, 11-year-old Nora and her best friend, 11-year-old Charlotte, spend many hours with their beloved babysitter, 16-year-old Rose Banks, exploring their dreams, watching scary movies, and poring through Time-Life books about the paranormal. Then Rose suddenly disappears. The girls' obsessive efforts to divine what happened eventually lead to the end of their close relationship. Sixteen years later, Rose's body is found, the case reopened. At Charlotte's insistence, Nora, the last person to see Rose alive, returns home to Waverly, Conn., where it strikes her that her old friends have never really moved on; all harbor both questions and secrets about Rose. Instead of dwelling on fear and pain, Arsenault guides the reader through grief, compassion, and understanding in this emotionally complex and deeply satisfying read.

April 15, 2011

Former best friends reunite to solve the mystery of their babysitter.

It's been nine years since Charlotte and Nora's babysitter Rose disappeared. During that time, Nora has married and become a potter kept busy at craft fairs, while Charlotte, after floundering a bit, has become a schoolteacher. Their friendship has withered, and the days when they scanned arcane texts in hope of divining what happened to Rose are only distant childhood memories when Charlotte calls and announces that Rose's body, folded into a wicker trunk, has surfaced. So Nora returns to Waverly, Conn., to pick up the friendship and the mystery of Rose, a task that wends past anonymous poems in The Looking Glass, the Waverly Literary magazine; a crippling accident that Rose witnessed; and a vow of silence taken by four joyriders out for a little fun. The backward journey must also investigate a suicide attempt, inexplicable mood swings and childhood rivalries, jealousies and thoughtless cruelties before reaching its sad conclusion. 

Arsenault (The Broken Teaglass, 2009) spins a tale that's sensitive, chilling and compellingly told in chapters alternating the troubled present with the even more turbulent past.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

Arsenault writes unusual mysteries that don't quite fit the conventions of the genre. Her first, The Broken Teaglass, revolves around lexicographers following a trail of clues with wit and wordplay. Here she focuses on a much darker story--the disappearance of a teenage girl. When best friends Nora and Charlotte are 11, Charlotte's beloved babysitter, Rose Banks, vanishes. Sixteen years later, when her body is discovered, Nora and Charlotte cautiously rekindle their friendship and try once again to solve the mystery. Back then they used the Time-Life series "Mysteries of the Unknown" to shape their investigation; now they bring an adult perspective, except Nora is overwhelmed by revisiting her rocky adolescence. Confronting her past proves difficult and filled with more than one mystery as she returns to her hometown for the first time since high school. VERDICT While Arsenault excels at depicting the confusion and anxiety of childhood, the mystery itself lacks suspense. A solid read in which the uncertainty of relationships is more important than finding out what happened to Rose.--Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
Eleven-year-old Charlotte loves mysteries and the supernatural. Nora, thoughtful and reserved, follows suit, mostly because bossy Charlotte is her only friend. The girls spend one memorable summer investigating the conundrums they discover in the black books, an old series about the supernatural, as Charlotte's troubled, 16-year old babysitter, Rose, watches over them. Years later, after Nora and Charlotte have made new lives, Rose's body is discovered, and the young women come together for an awkward reunion to reflect on Rose's influence on their lives. It's Nora who is most affected, and her questions about Rose lead her not only to the tragic circumstances of the death but also to the closure of a sad, haunting chapter in her own life. As comfortable writing about the concerns of sixth-grade girls as she is about the emotional lives of young women, Arsenault skips back and forth between then (1990) and now (2006), slowly unfurling an accomplished, searching tale of sad secrets and lives forever changed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)