The Shimmering Road

December 12, 2016
Thriller Award–finalist Young’s whip-smart, adrenaline-fueled second Charlotte “Charlie” Cates novel (after 2015’s The Gates of Evangeline) finds the pregnant journalist and her boyfriend, Noah Palmer, in Tucson, Ariz., attempting to adopt Charlie’s six-year-old niece, Michaela, after the double homicide of Charlie’s estranged mother, Donna DeRossi, and Charlie’s half-sister, Jasmine Cassell. The police believe that the crime was drug related, but those closest to the victims insist otherwise. Charlie launches an investigation that lands her and Noah in a tangled web of sex, lies, and international political corruption. Meanwhile, Charlie, who has a history of psychic dreams, is plagued by nightmares that predict her own violent death. Young deftly uses Charlie’s supernatural gift to create tension and dread without relying too heavily on it to advance the plot. And a story line involving Donna’s employer—a nonprofit that helps women living in Mexican border towns—both champions charity and gives poverty a human face. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth.

December 1, 2016
In the second of a projected trilogy, Young's clairvoyant protagonist investigates the murders of her mother and half sister.When we met Charlotte Cates in the series opener, Gates of Evangeline (2015), we learned that she was abandoned by her mother, Donna, who disappeared into a haze of drug addiction years ago. Charlotte, a magazine editor, has moved from Manhattan to Texas to live with landscaping entrepreneur Noah, whom she met in Evangeline. She's pregnant, with an imminent due date, but is still mulling over Noah's marriage proposal. And she's still plagued by recurring lucid dreams which predict disaster. Shortly after she dreams of a small child wandering in the desert, she learns her mother has been found murdered along with Jasmine, a half sister Charlotte didn't know she had, in Jasmine's Tucson apartment. Charlotte and Noah drive to Tucson intending to adopt Jasmine's 6-year-old daughter, Micky, who turns out to resemble the child in Charlotte's dream. Charlotte learns more about her mother from her lesbian partner, Pam, a police lieutenant. Donna and Pam met in AA, and Donna had become indispensable at Sonora Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to helping impoverished Mexican women. Jasmine was a serial partier who narrowly escaped brushes with the law, thanks in large part to a cop boyfriend, though drugs were found at the murder scene. Road trips to Mexico take up significant space in the book. Charlotte and Noah travel to the Mexican resort where Micky's father, Ruben, works to find that he is neither a murder suspect nor particularly interested in parenting. Another dream, about a bloody shower stall, and a vision concerning Lety, a Sonora Hope client who committed suicide, twice send Charlotte to the Mexican side of border town Nogales. The stories of the Mexican women, including Lety's sister Yulissa, who struggles to escape a bleak existence as a landfill scavenger, are more interesting than the main plot. Other complications do not so much present an intriguing puzzle as mislead readers, which is why the ending feels so unexpected and contrived. A road novel with too many detours.

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February 1, 2017

Following the well-received The Gates of Evangeline, this is the second book in Young's thriller trilogy featuring journalist Charlotte "Charlie" Cates, whose nightmare visions guide her in seeking justice and preventing tragedy for the most defenseless kids. Charlie has left the East Coast behind to start a new life in Texas with Noah and the daughter they're expecting. Charlie soon learns that her estranged mother and a half sister she didn't know about have been murdered in Tucson, AZ, leaving behind her niece Micky. Feeling obligated to help the young girl, Charlie and Noah make the trip to Arizona, where they're faced with the mystery of the killings and some tough decisions about how best to help Micky. Charlie's investigation of her mother's former work at a nonprofit organization leads her to the Mexican border town of Nogales and the settlement near the garbage dump of Tirabichi, where kids sift through trash looking for items to recycle. The answers that she begins to uncover there lead her on a nightmarish adventure across the Sonoran Desert. VERDICT With her wry voice and broken heart, Charlie is such a compelling character that you'll want to take the journey with her. Fine suspense.--Melissa DeWild, BookOps, New York P.L.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
Young's follow-up to The Gates of Evangeline (2015) is as well-crafted and captivating as her first novel. The Shimmering Road picks up not long after the first novel ends, with Charlotte Charlie Cates well into her seventh month of pregnancy. Charlie finds herself, again, having weird and prophetic dreamsone about a young girl, Micky, abandoned after the death of her mother and grandmother. The other, unlike her other dreams, centers on Charlie herself and her unborn child. Once again, she is drawn to a new locale in search of answers for a child who stands on the brink of destruction, but Micky may hold secrets to Charlie's past and answers about her estranged motherall while haunted by the strange dream about herself. The Shimmering Road takes place in a vastly different location than the first bookthis time in Tucson, Arizonaand Young manages to once again evoke the feeling of the location, this time giving the entire novel a sense of vast open land, endless skies, and oppressive heat. And like the first, this novel remains balanced between coping with what her strange gift shows her and the turmoil Charlie faces within herself in new and uncharted personal territory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)