
Author: Valérie Perrin
Published by: Europa Editions on Jun. 17, 2022
Genres: General Fiction
Pages: 512
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Publishers Group Canada
Book Rating: 9/10
From the international bestselling author of Fresh Water for Flowers, a beautifully told and suspenseful story about the ties that bind us and the choices that make us who we are.
1986: Adrien, Etienne and Nina are 10 years old when they meet at school and quickly become inseparable. They promise each other they will one day leave their provincial backwater, move to Paris, and never part.
2017: A car is pulled up from the bottom of the lake, a body inside. Virginie, a local journalist with an enigmatic past reports on the case while also reflecting on the relationship between the three friends, who were unusually close when younger but now no longer speak. . As Virginie moves closer to the surprising truth, relationships fray and others are formed.
Valérie Perrin has an unerring gift for delving into life. In Three, she brings readers along with her through a sequence of heart-wrenching events and revelations that span three decades. Three tells a moving story of love and loss, hope and grief, friendship and adversity, and of time as an ineluctable agent of change.
Review:
Raw, vivid, and sophisticated!
Three is a poignant, nostalgic, character-driven tale that sweeps you away to La Comelle, Burgundy between 1986 and 2017 and into the lives of Adrien, Etienne and Nina, three best friends since fifth grade who are seemingly inseparable until adulthood takes them in different directions, only to be brought back together again, along with fellow classmate, Virginie, who was always on the outside desperately looking in, when a car, potentially containing the body of a girl missing since 1994 is dredged from the local lake.
The prose is eloquent and expressive. The characters are multilayered, vulnerable, and scarred. And the plot is an astute, captivating tale about life, loss, friendship, family, secrets, jealousy, guilt, pain, anger, death, emerging sexuality, self-identity, and first loves.
Overall, Three is, ultimately, a beautifully written coming-of-age tale interwoven with a thread of mystery that does a remarkable job of delving into the complex dynamics between friends and is a wonderful reminder of just how complicated, challenging, memorable and emotionally wrenching growing up can truly be.
This book is available now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to PGC Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.