Spotlighted Author Julia Madeleine Shares Review...

Blencathra Shadows fall across the long grassy slope of Blease Fell, leading the eye towards the ridge and summit of Blencathra, top centre. Looking from Castlerigg Stone Circle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let The Shadows

  Fall Behind You

By Kathy-Diane Leveille

Book Description: If someone you love disappeared, how far would you go to forget? When Brannagh's boyfriend, Nikki, disappears on a bird count in Northern Ontario, she reluctantly agrees to return to the east coast for a reunion of the childhood all-girls club Tuatha-de-Dananns. Brannagh hides out at her Grandmother's cottage which is far too close to the woods where her mother was murdered fifteen years ago. As Brannagh struggles to solve the mystery of Nikki's vanishing, she uncovers the secrets behind the most startling disappearance of all.

Brannagh Maloney is working in Northern Ontario with a crew of wilderness preservationists tracking birds, when her boyfriend Nikki goes missing. Heartbroken over his disappearance, Brannagh travels back to her childhood home in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, where she reconnects with her girlhood friends. There she begins to unravel a bigger mystery from her past: the murder of her mother and her best friend’s little brother.

Let The Shadows Fall Behind You is an interesting and complex exploration of loss and childhood trauma. The story of Nikki and Brannagh’s relationship runs parallel through the story, and the past is interwoven with the present search for the truth about Brannagh’s family. I did find the blur in the temporal lines a bit distracting, even jarring at times as there didn’t seem to be any distinct transition. In spite of this, the novel is worth the read. Kathy-Diane Leveille writes with a hypnotic eloquence; this is entirely captivating.

Reviewed by Julia Madeleine...

About the Author...

I truly have loved books forever. My best friends are books; the fascinating characters, exotic worlds and challenges they contain. When I was growing up, a Saturday wasn't complete without a trip to the library. I would sit at the back of the city bus, where there was plenty of room to spread the booty, and anticipate the worlds that lay between the covers.

It wasn't until after I'd been working as a broadcast journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for ten years, that I discovered the only thing more fulfilling than reading a wonderful story is trying to write one.

I became a transplanted Maritimer twenty years ago when I moved to the Kennebecasis River where most of my fiction is set. My first book "Roads Unravelling" was published a few years ago by Sumach Press. The novel Let the Shadows Fall Behind You was released in the spring of 2009 by Kunati books.

I live life in the slow lane next to a wild flower and herb garden visited by a colorful array of birds, one groundhog and four ravenous deer.