Mickey Fitzpatrick has been patrolling the 24th District for years. She knows most of the working women by name. She knows what desperation looks like and what people will do when they need a fix. She's become used to finding overdose victims: their numbers are growing every year. But every time she sees someone sprawled out, slumped over, cold to the touch, she has to pray it's not her sister, Kacey. 

When the bodies of murdered sex workers start turning up on the Ave, the Chief of Police is keen to bury the news. They're not the kind of victims that generate a whole lot of press anyway. But Mickey is obsessed, dangerously so, with finding the perpetrator - before Kacey becomes the next victim.

Firstly, thank you so much to Lydia at Cornerstone for sending me a copy of this novel. 

This debut is absolutely incredible. 

I was hooked right from the first page. The book explores the life of a female police officer and her hunt for a serial killer. The book was fast paced and a real page turner. I did not want the book to end. 

I did not guess the ending and I cannot recommend this book enough! 

I cannot wait to read more by this author

I was so looking forward to Long Bright River but unfortunately it just didn't live up to the book I was expecting. I found I wasn't gripped by it at all and had to push hard to get through.

This was a great read, enjoyed it thoroughly, great storyline and loads of twists and turns , highly recommend this book x

This is a brilliant read.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and found myself second guessing every thought I had continuously.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.

I was provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher.  This is my own honest voluntary review.

Unfortunately I didn’t love this one as much as I was hoping to. I liked the idea behind it and the storyline, but it fell flat for me. I can see why some people love this one, but it just wasn’t for me.

An intense and compelling family thriller, I found it to be evocative and moving, keeping me hooked right up to the end.

Following a police officer as her city is plagued by a series of murders, but with each new body she visits the worry grows that this could be her troubled sister.
This was a long and peaceful mystery told with tender love. If you are looking for a fast-paced romp of a thriller you will not find it here. This is ultimately a story about familial love in a mystery wrapper.

Great quiet read.

Thank you Penguin Random House UK and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. 
This wasn't one for me.  I found it too intense and didn't like the main characters and couldn't connect to them. 
 The story was ok but not one I'd recommend.

a tad depressing and hard going at times but there was a good story here and was glad persevered with it and read the whole book

A heavy and intense read, but well worth it. I found it a little difficult to connect to the main character, but the overall story more than compensated for that.

In choosing fiction, my preference is for narratives driven by emotion rather than action – I want to be in a character’s head and to know what they are feeling, as opposed to being a bystander, ‘watching’ what happens to them.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore is very much an action-driven story. It tells of two sisters, Mickey and Kacey, whose lives begin in the same troubled home but then take very different paths . Kacey lives on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, addicted to heroin, and doing what she has to do to feed her habit. Mickey also knows the streets of Kensington but that’s because she joined the police force. Although the sisters are estranged, Mickey keeps an eye out for Kacey. When a string of unsolved murders occur – the victims all young women with drug habits – Mickey fears for her sister.

Long Bright River is classed as a mystery. The suspense moves at a good pace – a few twists and turns but not so much that it becomes implausible. And although there are clues throughout, I didn’t guess ‘who dunnit’, so it held my interest until the end. However, this story had themes that offered the opportunity for much greater emotional depth, including what it means to act honourably; the impact of addiction on a family; and ambiguous grief. Kacey and Mickey’s mother died from an overdose when they were young. Mickey reflects on this while feeding her newborn baby, Thomas –

‘…for the first time I understood the choice my own mother had made to leave us – if not by design, then by her actions, her carelessness, the recklessness with which she sought a fix. I understood that she had held me – us – in her arms, and gazed at us as I was then gazing at Thomas. She had held us like that and had decided to leave me, to leave us, anyway.’

Notably, that was the only quote I highlighted in my copy of the book – the rest was largely ‘police procedural’.

I was interested to read an interview with Moore, whose own family experience with addiction had influenced the novel. The interview hints at the stuff I wanted from Long Bright River – an examination of relationships, and the complexities of loving someone who is doing the ‘wrong’ thing. But the original inspiration for the novel came from photographer Jeffrey Stockbridge’s Kensington Blues project (trigger warning), where he documents the human cost of opioid addiction. The images and videos captured by Stockbridge are devastating, and it’s like watching Long Bright River come to life.

3/5 Solid, as far as mysteries go.

I received my copy of Long Bright River from the publisher, Penguin Random House UK, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited about Long Bright River but it fell short for me. I love character studies but I couldn't relate to Mickey. Her interactions with other characters feel clinical. We get descriptions of every terrible event that happened but none of the emotional fallout I would expect in her situation. 

I feel like this book tries to be many things at once but it’s essentially a police procedural disguised as literary fiction. Even until the end, I’m not sure what it’s trying to say. Police corruption? Murders of forgotten women? Single mothers? Bonds of sisterhood? All the elements are here but they never go beyond the surface. Also, I really dislike the lack of quotation marks! 

What I appreciate though is the book’s unflinching look at the perils of addiction, and how the effects ripple across generations. Substance abuse is a social problem and this shows how heartbreaking it can be to watch innocent lives get ruined. If there’s one thing the book did right, it’s to put a spotlight on how drug addiction leaves collateral damage in its wake.

Such a wonderfully well-written account of addiction and the bond between two sisters. A harrowing account of the pain addiction causes and the effect on the whole family. Powerfully gut-wrenching.

Told from Mickey's point of view, we follow two timelines, her childhood with drug addicted sister Kacey, and her search for her missing sister now.

Long Bright River is a bleak and unflinching look at the squalor and drive of drug addiction and its affects on friends and family of all ages.

A serial killer is murdering drug addicted prostitutes and patrol officer Mickey begins to fear that her sister, if not already a victim, will soon become one.

Everyone will fall under suspicion, Long Bright River has many twists and turns but what I enjoyed most was the character development. The unwritten codes of behaviour on each side of the tracks and the stark contrast between two sisters from the same terrible upbringing.

Watching Mickey struggle under the weight of her many hardships is not an easy read and for those who see the world in black and white this novel is a real eye opener. This story may be a fiction but for some it's life.

This was an easy to read thriller thaylt kept my attention all the way through! Lots of twists and surprises I didn't see coming. Very good, would recommend!

I seem to have read a different book to a lot of people.
The author was over descriptive which slowed the story nearly to a standstill.
I found the story line depressing.
Just not for me.

This is the first book I've read by Liz Moore and after finishing it I hope to read more. by her. She's a talented writer who cover the issues surrounding addiction and the effect it has on not just the addict but the people around them.  The book tells the tale of two sisters in Philadelphia. Mickey, a police who is searching for her missing sister, Kacey, an opioid addict. A serial killer on the lose killing young female addicts.. Is Kacey's disappearance linked?

Long Bright River is a wonderfully written story with a disturbing narrative.  I read this book out of curiosity and I’m so glad I did, I thoroughly recommend this crime thriller.

The characters are strong and believable.  Mickey is our heroine, she’s a police officer trying to find her sister Kacey who has recently gone missing, they were inseparable as children.  They come from a dysfunctional family and her sister's life has been one of drug addiction and living on the streets.  Mickey is trying her best to raise her young son, lives alone and keeps mostly to herself. 

The story is set in Kensington a neighbourhood of Philadelphia where we see the destructive nature of drug addiction and the harsh realities of sex workers and drug dealers on the streets where Mickey patrols. There is a serial killer on the loose and Mickey is worried that her sister may be his next victim.

A great read about family relationships, police corruption, harsh reality and hope.

When a string of sex-workers are found dead on the streets of Kensington, Police Officer Mickey is determined to find the culprit – not just for the women on her beat but for her sister who is one of them. Will she be next?

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Long Bright River from its blurb – it seemed a little obvious and cliché for me at first impression which to be honest put me off picking it up for a little while. When I did get round to reading it however, I hold my hands up that I was completely wrong. Long Bright River is a well-written, intelligent, character-driven crime thriller. At almost 500 pages it is a long read although I always felt compelled to pick it up and keep reading it – I never got tired or bored with it. The plot jumps between Police Officer Mickey in the present day trying to find her sister and flashbacks of her past and family history. These are nicely balanced together, and I liked the character of Mickey – she is really interesting with a lot of hidden depth and layers to her. It was nice to have a real deep-dive into her past rather than just skimming over the important bits and this made her feel so much more rounded and realistic as a character. The background of Kensington is also really well-described and I really got a grip on the gritty atmosphere and politics of the place (despite thinking they meant the well-off area of London for the first chapter which really confused me!)

The crime itself was well-tied into Mickey’s personal story, although it does take a slight backseat to her finding her sister but it’s woven nicely into the plot to help increase the tension. It didn’t feel like too much was held back from the reader (other than what Mickey herself doesn’t know) although there was a great twist towards the end which pushed any assumptions you may have made about a certain character. The end reveal also had a twist on a twist which really threw me – there was a red herring had me thinking ‘well I totally guessed that really early on’ only for it to turn around and prove me wrong!

I was reading the Kindle ARC so I completely appreciate the formatting may have changed by the published product but it wasn’t the easiest format to read. Paragraphs and chapters were run together in places (including the acknowledgements and the final chapter which really jarred as my headspace as I tried to absorb the realistic but certainly not fairy-tale ending). There were also no quotation marks to establish dialogue which I think was a conscious choice and this actually worked quite nicely.

Overall, Long Bright Read is an intelligent, well-constructed thriller. Thank you to NetGalley & Penguin Random House – Hutchinson for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book captivated me from the beginning. Interesting characters, layered storyline with some twist that surprised me and impeccable writing. It's not always an easy read, the book centers around drug abuse, but did it well in my opinion. Highly reccomend!