{"id":1600937,"date":"2020-08-28T17:19:25","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T21:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/?p=1600937"},"modified":"2020-08-28T17:19:25","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T21:19:25","slug":"divine-reads-dark-august-by-katie-tallo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/divine-reads-dark-august-by-katie-tallo\/","title":{"rendered":"DIVINE Reads: Dark August by Katie Tallo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dark August<\/a>: About the Book<\/h3>\n

Augusta (Gus) Monet is living an aimless existence with her grifter boyfriend when she learns that her great grandmother\u2014her last living relative\u2014has just died. Ditching her boyfriend, Gus returns to the home she left as a young girl. Her inheritance turns out to be a dilapidated house and an old dog named Levi. While combing through her great grandmother\u2019s possessions, Gus stumbles across an old trunk filled with long-lost childhood belongings. But that\u2019s not all the trunk contains. She also discovers cold case files that belonged to her mother, a disgraced police detective who died in a car accident when Gus was eight. Gus remembers her mother obsessing over these very same documents and photographs, especially a Polaroid of a young ballerina.<\/p>\n

When Gus spots a front-page news story about the unearthing of a body linked to one of the cold case files from her childhood trunk, she can\u2019t resist following her mother\u2019s clues. As she digs deeper, determined to finish her mother\u2019s investigation, her search leads her to a deserted ghost town, which was left abandoned when the residents fled after a horrific fire. As Gus\u2019 obsession with the case grows, she inadvertently stirs up the evils of the past, putting her life in danger. But Gus is undeterred and is committed to uncovering long-buried secrets, including the secrets surrounding a missing geology student, the young ballerina in the Polaroid, a prominent family\u2019s devastating legacy, and a toxic blast that blew an entire town off the map.<\/p>\n

But is Gus ready to learn the truths that culminated on one terrible August night, more than a decade earlier, when lives were taken, and secrets were presumed buried forever\u2026?<\/p>\n

The Review<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Set mainly in Ottawa, \u201cDark August\u201d is a complicated book about a complicated heroine<\/a>.\u00a0 Gus is trying to find her place in the world after tragedy and loss left her abandoned in many ways.\u00a0 You end up rooting for Gus in spite of, or maybe because of her flaws.\u00a0 Although the character is young, she is an old soul.\u00a0 During the course of the book, she shifts from living an aimless existence, to one of purpose. That purpose is to solve the mystery of her mother\u2019s death, but along the way she meets a compelling cast of characters. The more she discovers about her mother\u2019s death and the events leading to it, the more uncertainty there is.\u00a0 Gus has to think the way her mother did and that stirs up a world of trouble.<\/p>\n

Canadian Author, Katie Tallo knows how to pace a book and to build the story to a climax.\u00a0 The book is never slow \u2013 it has a well-developed plot, and Gus (and her mother) are well developed as characters.\u00a0 Gus uses her memories and pure detective work to find out the truth about her mother\u2019s death.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost like she is channeling her mother and trying to reconnect with her memory.\u00a0 Levi, the geriatric dog, humanizes Gus and adds some lightness to an otherwise dark story.\u00a0 It is thanks to the dog, that Gus finds the unconditional love that she is seeking.\u00a0 Levi, like all of the secondary characters is needed \u2013 they all serve to move the plot forward.<\/p>\n

The last hundred pages of the book not only wrap up the action, but present so many twists and turns it is hard not to gasp out loud.\u00a0 You will get goosebumps at the end \u2013 that is how taut the story becomes.\u00a0 It will leave you breathless.<\/p>\n

Favourite Line From the Book<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt was there, lying in her bed at school, facing the wall, head covered, that Gus learned to drop into the dark cave of her memories and lower herself deeply and fully into the past.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This line was in the early pages of \u201cDark August\u201d, but remained a consistent theme throughout the book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dark August: About the Book Augusta (Gus) Monet is living an aimless existence with her grifter boyfriend when she learns that her great grandmother\u2014her last living relative\u2014has just died. Ditching…<\/div>\n
View Post<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1600938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6440,3764,7666,183,7665,7664,193,7662,251,187,7667,7663,5462,206],"powerkit_post_featured":[3],"class_list":{"0":"post-1600937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews","8":"tag-best-books-of-2020","9":"tag-best-sellers","10":"tag-book-releases-2020","11":"tag-book-reviews","12":"tag-book-reviews-2020","13":"tag-book-reviews-on-novels","14":"tag-canadian-authors","15":"tag-dark-august","16":"tag-female-authors","17":"tag-fiction","18":"tag-fiction-book-reviews","19":"tag-katie-tallo","20":"tag-mysteries","21":"tag-thrillers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1600937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1600938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1600937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1600937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1600937"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=1600937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}