Her suitor’s cousin offers him a way out, but it won’t be easy. When Gwennie is obliged to turn a suitor down because she fears to leave her brother to the brutality of their village, Knife is desperate for anything to ensure her happiness.

The only thing beautiful in his life is his sister. Let me know if you’ve read this book in the comments below.Knife’s entire existence has been as twisted as his flesh and his face.

In a way, Allegra’s fate is a secondary plot point, the main journey is Lane’s acceptance of what happened to her, to her mother, to her cousins and aunts, and to move on with her life in a nondestructive way. I gave it 3/5 stars on Goodreads because it was a bit obvious what was going on – I suspected what had happened to Allegra about halfway through the book. I don’t really want to say more, in case I ruin the book for you, but it is seriously disturbing. It’s apparent almost immediately what the family secret is, and why the Roanoke girls run or die young, but it’s just so compelling. When her Grandad calls her at 3am 11 years later to say that Allegra has gone missing, Lane knows that she has to help find her, but it means going back to that house, back to being a Roanoke girl… She finally gets to meet her family, live in the house she’s dreamed of, and be a rich Roanoke girl.Īt first everything seems idyllic, and Lane loves her eccentric cousin Allegra, but there is something rotten at the core of the family, and Lane decides to run. Lane is taken to her grandparents in Kansas. She left a note saying that she’d tried to wait. One day she comes home from school to find that her mum has killed herself. Lane has idealised the house and family her mum ran from, picturing a beautiful old farmhouse, but her mum says it was a nightmare. They have no money, live in an awful apartment in New York, and her mum is seriously depressed. Lane had a bit of crap upbringing her mum ran away from home when she became pregnant at 16. Sometimes people who love us can still hurt us. Is she strong enough to escape a second time? Until eleven years later, when her cousin Allegra goes missing – and Lane has no choice but to go back.

When she was fifteen, over one long, hot summer at her grandparents’ estate in rural Kansas, she found out what it really means to be a Roanoke girl. But there’s a dark truth about them which is never spoken. The marketing campaign for The Roanoke Girls was really well done, I saw a few of the teaser pictures on Twitter and I was so intrigued! I’m trying not to buy as many books until my TBR pile is more manageable, so this was one of the few books I pre-ordered towards the end of last year.

Truth in the dark amy lane