"Hurricanes aren’t just weather; they are monsters that never truly die.”
The Storm was my second January listen for another of @hook.me.a.book’s challenges, the #LetsEarItAudiobookChallenge ๐ง๐. I’d been seeing this one everywhere on Instagram over the past few weeks, so I finally got around to listening.
It took me a while to get into it. The build-up was slow, and I found it took a minute to get to grips with all the different characters — particularly in audio format, where each character had a different narrator ๐️. However, once I’d heard from them all, I was hooked and the pace picked up more and more. Alongside the multiple points of view, the story also uses a dual timeline — just to confuse me and intrigue me a little further ⏳๐ค.
After all the twists and turns, I still couldn’t fully work out what had happened in the past or how it was going to play out in the present, especially as the latest hurricane headed towards St Medard’s Bay ๐ช️. As the story peaked, I found myself listening for longer than I usually would, just so I could reach the end and uncover the tangled web of the finale ๐ฎ๐จ✨.
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to listen to and review The Storm by Rachel Hawkins ๐๐.
About the Book
St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.
When Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard’s Bay on the map, she’s less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn’s bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn’t come to St. Medard’s Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she’s returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.
As the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive—and as deadly—as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping…
About Rachel
Born in Virginia and raised in Alabama, Rachel Hawkins has been writing since Kindergarten when her first book, a tense thriller involving a unicorn, a witch, and a princess, was called, “very imaginative!” by her teacher and “a searing work of genius” by her mother.
Since then, Rachel has written over a dozen books for children and adults (sadly all unicorn-free thus far), and been published in more than twenty countries. As Rachel Hawkins, she wrote the New York Times bestselling THE WIFE UPSTAIRS, a Southern Gothic twist on JANE EYRE that the Southern Review of Books called, “a thrill ride,” and Entertainment Weekly dubbed, “a gothic thriller laced with arsenic.” Her latest thriller, RECKLESS GIRLS, also debuted on the New York Times list with Kirkus calling it, “a soapy, claustrophobic page-turner.”
When not writing modern Gothic thrillers as Rachel Hawkins, she also pens paranormal romantic comedies under the name Erin Sterling. Her debut romance, THE EX HEX, was a Book of the Month pick as well as a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller.
Rachel currently lives in Auburn, Alabama with her husband, son, and five cats. (Yes, five. She knows.). In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and picking up an assortment of creative hobbies she will give up on after a week or two.
