White Horses Book

This book will take some time to digest. It's called a book hangover. For some reason when I first glanced at the description, I took it as a fantasy story where the main character was chasing her brother, Silver through her dreams. I was wrong and I was right. I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I had known it was about a small town, dysfunctional family. I don't usually read books like that. Real life is depressing enough. Half way through, I very nearly gave it up.

I am so glad I didn't. There are many themes in the book, love versus passion, fantasy versus reality, overcoming grief, growth. At what point is a person too old for fairy tales? Is giving up those fairy tales the same as losing hope? Or is it only a matter of finding something better? Something more meaningful? It's a lot to take in. It's a lot to think about. I still don't know how I feel about it.

It's been said in every other review, but I suppose I'll say it again. Alice Hoffman's writing is beautiful, lyrical, poetic. Even when dealing with such awful subjects as drugs and incest, she somehow managed to make it beautiful. You could hear the crickets chirping in the moonlight, feel the summer breeze blowing off the river, the chill of early morning fog.

The story is driven relentlessly on by the never-ending drama. Just when you think it can't get worse for Teresa, just when you think Silver can't get more awful, just when Dina finds happiness, something happens. It gets worse. The characters fall lower then they ever have before. Unfortunately, Teresa and Dina seem to be the only ones who find redemption, and even then, you could argue that Dina never found it. She was better in the end, but not as good as she could have been. Not enough to pull her children back from the edge. It was too little too late. She loved herself more than she loved her children. Going so far as to actually speak out loud or write down which ones were her favorites. Just the same, Dina's story tore my heart out.

This won't be a story for everyone, and that's certainly understandable. If you could appreciate nothing else in the book, it certainly gets you thinking, and sometimes it takes an uncomfortable topic to do so. Those topics abound. Incest is the most prevalent, but drugs, alcoholism, prostitution, and abuse of women are also contained within the pages, and at times were worse than the incest. Still, I think if one can get past the discomfort of it all, this book is well worth reading and pushing through to the end.

I did feel like some story threads were left incomplete. What was the deal with the necklace and Harper? Whatever happened to King Connor and Reuben? What happened to Dina's mother in New Mexico? These loose threads left me with a sense of unfinished in my mouth, but ultimately it was Teresa's story and I suppose it ended where it needed to.

Thank you to Open Road Media and Net Galley for providing me with ARC in exchange for an honest review.