YESTERNIGHT by Cat Winters

A young child psychologist steps off a train, her destination a foggy seaside town. There, she begins a journey causing her to question everything she believes about life, death, memories, and reincarnation.

In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.

Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories, at first believing they’re no more than the product of the girl’s vast imagination.  But, slowly, Alice comes to the realization that Janie might indeed be telling a strange truth.

Alice knows the investigation may endanger her already shaky professional reputation, and as a woman in a field dominated by men she has no room for mistakes. But she is unprepared for the ways it will illuminate terrifying mysteries within her own past, and in the process, irrevocably change her life.

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Naughty Little Tidbits: Disturbing Behaviour, Bad Role Model

Review

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Would I recommend this book for...
Teenagers?No
Adults?No

Comments: Yesternight has to be among one of the most oddball books that I've read. I had really been looking forward to reading this book with my co-workers since we all work in the mental health profession. It started off with a great introduction. I thought that Cat Winters created a great opening scene, and I wish the work in that scene had carried over to the rest of the novel. The main character, Alice, has to be one of the oddest, and most unstable, main characters I've read about, outside of House of Leaves, for quite a while. She should never be allowed around children, and I would certainly never want to see her get into doctoral school. I think she did enough damage at the level of education she had achieved, and shudder to think what kind of damage she could cause at the doctoral level. It felt like the author tried to put modern day elements into a time period where they just didn't fit, and even the language didn't seem to fit the time period. Strange elements about Alice's quirks were interjected at random moments throughout the story, and were quite jarring at times. We had fun discussing this novel at our work book club, but not because we were impressed with the writing.

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