“So let’s raise our glass to the accident season,
To the river beneath us where we sink our souls,
To the bruises and secrets, to the ghosts in the ceiling,
One more drink for the watery road.”
Cara is afraid she has no secrets. She is afraid that she isn’t witchy and interesting like her best friend Bea. She is afraid that she’ll never be as in control as her older sister Alice. She is afraid to think too hard about her ex-stepbrother, Sam. Most all of, she is afraid that this accident season is going to be a bad one.
Cara is afraid of her secrets. Every October, Cara’s family falls victim to a slew of accidents. It’s an open secret among their friends and neighbors who ignore the scrapes and bruises or try to find reasonable explanations for the broken bones and deeper hurts.
Cara is afraid of everybody else’s secrets. Everyone in Cara’s family is good at keeping secrets from friends, from each other. They’re good at pretending that the cuts don’t hurt, that the bruises don’t show.
But every accident leaves a mark; every season creates new secrets, new things no one wants to talk about. This season Cara will start to learn why in The Accident Season (2015) by Moïra Fowley-Doyle.
The Accident Season is Fowley-Doyle’s debut novel.
The real power and strength of The Accident Season is in its ambiguity. This is a story about secrets and the lies we tell others (and even ourselves) to keep them. This is a story that explores exactly what it means when there are no easy answers.
The Accident Season is nuanced, optimistic and just a little bit unsettling. In a story filled with secrets and things not said, Cara’s first person narration is taut and keeps up the tension as she and her friends try to learn more about the accident season and their mysterious classmate Elsie.
The Accident Season is an atmospheric and distinctive novel where nothing is exactly what readers first expect. Part ghost story and part mystery, The Accident Season is an aching story about love and loss with elements of sweet romance and sparks of magic. This meditative story about family and the many ways old wounds can heal proves that Fowley-Doyle is an author to watch. The perfect blend of eerie and whimsical. Highly recommended.
Possible Pairings: The Leaving by Tara Altebrando, The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough, Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo, The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke, Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert, Blackfin Sky by Kat Ellis, The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee, The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu, Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, When We Collided by Emery Lord, In Real Life by Jessica Love, Sender Unknown by Sallie Lowenstein, Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta, The Weight of Feathers by Anne-Marie McLemore, The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy, It Wasn’t Always Like This by Joy Preble, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, Bone Gap by Laura Ruby, Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick, I Woke Up Dead at the Mall by Judy Sheehan, Never Never by Brianna Shrum, The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, Last Things by Jacqueline West
*A copy this book was acquired from the publisher for review consideration at BEA 2015*
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