Friday, August 14, 2015

Review: Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2) by Julia Dahl








  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 926 KB
  • Print Length: 287 pages
  • Publisher: Minotaur Books (June 30 2015)
  • Sold by: Macmillan CA
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B00OFL6QYE
Book Description


 Aviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida-and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.

But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, N.Y. contacts Rebekah about his young wife's mysterious death, she is drawn back into Aviva's world. Pessie Goldin's body was found in her bathtub, and while her parents want to believe it was an accident, her husband is certain she was murdered.

Once she starts poking around, Rebekah encounters a whole society of people who have wandered "off the path" of ultra-Orthodox Judaism-just like her mother. But some went with dark secrets, and rage at the insular community they left behind.

In the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window into a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit.

Description take from the publisher's web site.



About the Author


 Julia Dahl was born in Fresno, Calif., to a Lutheran father and a Jewish mother. She currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Julia has been writing about crime since 2004 when Seventeen magazine sent her to cover the story of a young Birmingham, Ala., girl who had been killed by her mother. Since then, she has worked as a freelance reporter at the New York Post, the deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, and now covers crime and justice for CBSNews.com.

Julia's feature articles have appeared in Mental Floss, Salon, Pacific Standard, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and the Daily Beast, among others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation and the Nation Institute for her reporting on criminal justice issues.

Before turning her attention to crime and justice, Julia was an editor at Redbook and Marie Claire. She began her career fact-checking at Entertainment Weekly.

INVISIBLE CITY is her first novel. She is at work on the sequel.



My Review


 Run You Down is the second book in the Rebekah Roberts mystery series by author Julia Dahl. I discovered this series last year when Dahl was nominated for several awards for her debut novel Invisible City. I loved Invisible City so I had been anxiously awaiting the follow up novel, Run You Down.

Run You Down reveals Rebekah's mother Aviva's story to the readers.  It is a fascinating story and completely different from what I had been expecting. It is such a realistic tale as Dahl explores the motivations of the young Aviva through to middle age. I loved how Run You Down went back and forth from Rebekah's story to Aviva's.

Dahl is able to bring the world of Hasidim to life. It is a world of which I knew nothing but I find that it is much in common with the views of all fundamentalist religions...so interesting. It can  be such a hard world for those who leave Hasidim behind to look for answers away from everything they have known.

The mystery aspect of Run You Down was equally compelling. I love this series and cannot wait for more. I highly recommend Run You Down. It can be a stand-alone but do your self a favor and read Invisible City first.

1 comment:

  1. I read Invisible City earlier this year and have been eagerly awaiting the second book. Now I see that it is out and where have I been? Not reading it yet. LOL

    Thanks for sharing about it and reminding me. I really was interested in all the aspects of the first book regarding the Hasidic traditions and I do want to find out more about Rebekah's mother. Yay! Off to find it.

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