Book Review: No More Words

Synopsis:

No More Words is the first book in a new trilogy from bestselling author Kerry Lonsdale about love, betrayal, and the secrets families keep.

Pregnant at sixteen, Olivia Carson’s younger sister, Lily, was forced to choose between abortion or adoption. Instead, she ran away from home and never returned.

But she writes. Once a year, Lily mails a picture of her son, Josh, to Olivia, a graphic novelist.

But now it’s Josh himself at Olivia’s home. Thirteen years old, he’s alone, terrified, and in possession of a notarized declaration from Lily. It begins, “In the event I go missing . . .”

Josh has difficulty talking. And he can’t read or write, but he’s a prolific artist, exhibiting skill well beyond his age. His drawings are as detailed as they are horrific, and Olivia soon realizes Josh’s artwork tells a story. There’s more to his arrival and to Lily’s untimely disappearance than it seems.

Using the drawings as a road map, Olivia traces Josh’s path back to his mom with each drawing shedding light on Lily’s past. Eventually the drawings reveal a darkness that forces Olivia to question everything she thought she knew about her family.

Review:

Kerry Lonsdale is the author of the popular “Everything” series (Everything We Keep, Everything We Leave Behind, and Everything We Give), as well as three stand-alone novels: All the Breaking Waves, Last Summer , and Side Trip. With No More Words, she launches her “No More” trilogy.

Lonsdale says that the heart of the series is her attempt to answer this question: “Does a parent’s dysfunction prevent the younger generation from having a normal life, or have circumstances fated them to live with their trauma?” Inspiration for the series came from an actual event. Lonsdale relates that she was awakened on a summer night at 2:00 a.m. She heard the sounds of glass shattering and metal on metal, and the smell of burnt rubber. From her window, she watched a vehicle drive straight across the street into her neighbor’s ex-husband’s truck, t-boning it. And then the driver of the car backed up and rammed the truck again, again, and again until she’d pushed the truck up over the sidewalk and onto the front lawn and the front end of the vehicle she was driving was thoroughly crumpled. She didn’t stop until the police arrived on the scene. Her face was bloody from hitting the steering wheel, her eyes had swollen shut. Lonsdale subsequently discovered that the driver of the vehicle was the man’s girlfriend, and she had driven four hours to illustrate her unhappiness at learning that he was spending the night at his ex-wife’s house.

But, Lonsdale notes, “the real tragedy was his daughter. He’d spent the night at his ex-wife’s house (on her couch) because he’d come to celebrate her eighth-grade graduation. And after the police left and ambulance drove off, I saw her standing on the porch dressed in pajamas, clutching her favorite stuffed animal. She’d witnessed the entire debacle.”

You think you know someone until you learn something new and realize you didn’t know them at all.

In the ensuing years, Lonsdale says she’s thought about that girl and wondered how that event, along with other incidents, impacted her. “I wondered how they changed her relationship with her father. Did she pick up his habits as she aged, his boozing and gambling? Did she ever have a chance at a normal life, or did her childhood doom her to live with secrets and pain?”

No More Words focuses on three siblings: Olivia, her younger sister, Lily, and their brother, Lucas. Olivia is a successful graphic novelist, living in their hometown on California’s beautiful Central Coast just west of San Luis Obispo. As the book opens, she is in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend, Blaze, because she believes he has been unfaithful to her. Tumult in their relationship is nothing new.

Suddenly, Olivia’s nephew, Josh, shows up at her house. Olivia is stunned when he is dropped off. She has never met Josh, although she has received a photograph of him every year from Lily, who ran away when she was just sixteen years old and pregnant. She never returned and Olivia has no idea where she lives or how she supports herself. At the time, their father, Dwight, told Olivia that the father of Lily’s unborn child was Olivia’s twenty-one-year-old boyfriend, Ethan. That revelation shattered Olivia’s relationship with him and she has not been in touch with him in many years, either. Olivia has long struggled to trust anyone.

At first, Olivia finds Josh’s behavior odd and unsettling. But she soon realizes that Josh isn’t simply choosing not to communicate with her. He is unable to speak more than a few words at a time, and his efforts to do so cause him to become frustrated and angry. Olivia also notices a scar on his scalp, suggesting that he has undergone a procedure fairly recently. He’s unable to explain how he got to Olivia’s home, where he and his mother live, or why he has arrived there alone. Naturally, Olivia fears the worst — that something horrible has happened to Lily. And, of course, she becomes determined to learn the truth. She has to know if her sister needs help and, perhaps, if it is now her responsibility to finish raising Josh. When she realizes that he is a talented artist, she suggests that he draw pictures to relate what he can’t articulate.

As children, Olivia, Lily, and Lucas spent summers with Harold and Rhonda Whitman and their sons, Theo and Ty, at the Whitman’s cabin. Until something happened and they were returned home, never to enjoy more carefree days swimming in the lake, hiking, and sleeping in tents in the cabin’s loft. Appearances meant everything to Dwight and Charlotte. Dwight had political ambitions until a scandalous and tragic event derailed them. The children, reluctant at first, came to love the time at the cabin, away from their parents and the tensions at home.

Josh’s sudden appearance drudges up old conflicts, alliances, resentments, and secrets. Lonsdale has crafted a cast of characters whose lives will be forever changed by Josh’s introduction into their lives. The first volume of the trilogy is devoted primarily to Olivia — her history, relationships with her family members, as well as Ethan and the Whitman boys, and the way that her childhood experiences inform the woman she is today. She has achieved professional success, but her personal life has remained unsettled. And as she grows increasingly fond and protective of the nephew she is only now getting to know, she must piece together a fourteen-year-old mystery: What exactly happened to Lily, and why was she treated differently by their parents than Olivia and Lucas? Is Ethan really Josh’s father? If not, who is? And why did she leave, cutting off all ties with her family? And, more urgently, what happened to Olivia herself? Did she witness and experience things years ago that she is only now able to understand? The Carson family’s life seemed idyllic to outside observers but, in reality, appearances are deceiving. As Olivia grapples with clues to the truth, she has to decide what her newfound knowledge means and find a way to move forward.

No More Words is a gripping, emotional concoction of domestic drama and psychological thriller rolled into one. Lonsdale is at her best in this novel, deftly interspersing glimpses of the past with Olivia’s present-day efforts to solve multiple mysteries. The pace of the story never slows, and Lonsdale’s characters are fully developed and multi-layered. Charlotte is particularly exasperating. She’s a woman who wants to maintain the facade of perfection, literally shutting down to avoid confrontations, but Olivia spares no mercy when she realizes that her own mother may be complicit in harboring dark family secrets and covering up damaging truths. Josh is particularly endearing, of course, because of his age and vulnerability. He is an adolescent adrift. Away from the mother who has raised him without the benefit of a loving, supportive extended family, he is frightened and worried, thrust into the midst of family members has has never known, and grappling with his inability to express his emotions except through his drawings. Readers will take him into their hearts and can be reunited with his mother. Lucas was a bit wild as a young man, but paid dearly for incidents that took place years ago. He hasn’t forgotten and there may be no space in his life for forgiveness . . . for himself or anyone else.

As for that young girl Lonsdale observed years ago . . . “I believe that even though our past experiences can leave us fractured and flawed, we can rise above it, control it rather than letting our past control us,” Lonsdale says. “Through therapy, love, and acknowledgement, we can stop the cycle of intergenerational trauma. . . . This makes me believe that the thirteen-year-old girl on the porch all those years ago has been living a rich, normal life that isn’t ruled by her childhood.”

The Carson family saga continues in volume two, No More Lies in 2022. Which is not soon enough. Whether Lonsdale ultimately bequeaths upon Olivia, Lily, and Lucas “a rich, normal life that isn’t ruled by [their] childhood[s]” remains to be seen.