This was in the middle for me. The story itself was interesting, but I think it dragged a little bit. The chapters were confusing because I couldn't tell whose POV was who. The mystery resolved itself, but I felt like it was just thrown in there.

An enjoyable read that has received many great reviews. I look forward to more titles by this author.

I was really drawn to the premise of this book, but it sadly didn't hit the spot for me. The writing style was absolutely lovely, but the plot became too much about the drama and bickering between the sisters and lost focus on the story of the missing sister, which didn't really turn out to be too much of a mystery, after all. I also found that I strongly disliked the girl's grandmother.

Sorry to say it's just a two star read for me. 2 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Laura Barrow and Lake Union for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Families and their complex relationships are something that provides a lot of content for books. The overall situation brings out characteristics of members that drive the narrative forward. Here, too, we have such a setting.
There are now three sisters when there were once four. Each of these three sisters has a completely different life, which makes it hard for them to work together as a team. One is happily married with kids; the other is a career woman, and the last is someone who lost her way by targeting lower than she should be. It is this third sister who stayed back in her small town to care for their eccentric grandmother and live in a place that continues to remind her of the sister they all lost.
This visit is slightly different. There is an agenda of raking up the past. Each of the sisters has reached a breaking point in their lives when something has to change. Finding out what exactly happened to their sister and the fact that they each carry a form of guilt about the incident is the focus of the narrative.
All the people in this story are very different from one another, and that makes it very interesting to follow all the interactions between them.
Surprisingly, the mystery of what actually happened to the sister does not retain its position as the central focal point of the story - The rebuilding of the sibling relationship as adults.
I would recommend this to readers who like family dramas which have depth to them. I already have another book by the author sitting on my virtual shelf.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

I don’t think these family centered stories are for me. The writing was great and the story was okay. I just became bored easily.

Savannah was four years old when her twin sister, Georgia, went missing from their small Louisiana town, fracturing their family. Twenty-eight years later, Savannah convinces her estranged older sisters, Rayanne and Sue Ellen, to honor the pact they made as children and retrieve the time capsule they buried in their old backyard. But coming home means confronting old ghosts…and their stubborn grandmother, Meemaw. Savannah is still grieving for her twin and starts investigating. The town doesn't want the case reopened. The sisters finally work together and put aside their differences.

This was just an average read with forgettable characters and story line. While it held my interest in the moment, I won't remember I read it at the end of the year.

This was a DNF for me. I was interested in the story but just not enough. I didn’t really ever feel like picking it up and I wasn’t able to finish before it expired.

This book was okay. I enjoyed the storytelling of this book. Overall, a good book with strong characters and family dynamics.

I ended up getting this book via Amazon since I knew it would take me a while and felt like I shouldn't hold an ARC forever. The beginning isn't really my thing and it will probably be some time before I finish.

Call the Canaries Home by Laura Barrow was a well written story with a great plot but unfortunately it didn't live up to the premise of the summary for this book. I expected it to focus more Georgia and her disappearance and while it touched on that and it weaved throughout the book I felt that it focused more on the familial relationships. I liked it but I thought I was going to get an amateur detective story instead of what it was. Overall it was okay but I couldn't connect to any of the characters and I thought that it was quite slow paced in places.

Three estranged sisters who faced so much grief in their childhood grew apart and moved away from each other but are brought back together one weekend to honor a pact they made as kids to dig up the time capsule they buried. When they sisters are back together again under their grandmother’s house all the memories come flooding back opening up their painful history but also reminds them of the brighter memories from childhood they had tucked away and helps them reconnect as sisters. Set in a small town in Louisiana, this contemporary fiction had all the makings of a beautiful story of a family ripped apart by grief and secrets who find a way back together again, after all, “family is family.” I absolutely fell in love with this story.

Call the Canaries Home is about family, and the bonds that connect a family to each other. Three sisters living their lives as separately as they possibly can, collide when they're called back home to fulfill an obligational pact they made years ago, and what unfolds is not only a little bit of a mystery, but also an unraveling of pretenses, fronts, walls, and separateness of familial bonds. Very sweet and highlights what Meemaw knew all along....family is everything.
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*

I am conflicted about Call the Canaries Home - it had a lot of promise. The blurb made me think I was about to read a bit of a detective story, but it turned out to be quite far from that. The characters were well developed, and I found it easy to imagine the setting. But it just didn't seem to go far enough? The ending left me feeling quite flat, and just a bit.. eh.

It had a lot of promise, and I'm sure some people will really enjoy it, but it just was not for me.

2.5 stars

I feel misled by the book synopsis for Call the Canaries Home. I went in expecting an amateur detective story: three sisters tackling the disappearance of their sister, a supposedly solved case with no body and no closure. Instead, Call the Canaries Home is a convoluted family drama where everyone keeps dying off and no one is happy.

I struggled to tell the sisters apart in my head. I don’t know if I was just disinterested or if there wasn’t enough in the writing to tell the perspectives apart, or if it just didn’t matter to the narrative, but until the very end, I was still waiting for identifying characteristics to tell which sister was which. Last time I checked, ‘has kids’, ‘lives on the east coast’ and ‘never left home’ were not their names.

"For the first time since we'd lost Georgia, I sensed something tugging on the other end of the invisible thread that tethered the two of us together. It wasn't a feeling I could explain to Rayanne and Sue Ellen, but it was there just the same. My sister was not dead. Because as soon as I saw that photograph of the two of us, it was as if I heard a familiar voice calling out, as clear as if she'd been standing right next to me.

Come and find me, Savannah. It's time."

But most disappointing was the mystery. Occasionally, someone would mention the missing sister or the lack of evidence or closure, but it felt more like a reminder that ‘oh yeah, that’s what this book is supposed to be about’. There’s very little effort put into the mystery, even when suspicious and interesting facts are being discovered by accident.

Having said all that, Call the Canaries Home isn’t bad, just a little boring. There’s a lot of material here that could’ve been used to explore generational poverty and family dynamics. There are some allusions to food deserts, poor education and limited future prospects, but there’s no effort made to dig any deeper. I considered DNFing the entire time I was reading, but I kept hoping there might be a twist or things could get interesting. Unfortunately, that never happened.

This was such a beautiful book! I had been looking for a good book that was touching and heartfelt about women. In this book there are 3 sisters who go to visit their Meemaw, who raised them. It's a book about forgiveness and healing. I laughed often and I cried a bit too. I loved this beautifully written book!

2/5 stars for Call the Canaries Home. Overall, this book was just...boring. It didn't hold my attention, the characters were static, and the plot was dull. It was like the plot was building and building.. and then nothing of interest really happened.

Call the Canaries Home is a really great character development driven book with questions and mystery surrounding past events. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique feel to this book that focused on the current and past events between a family of three sisters and their grandma with questions surrounding the disappearance of the fourth sister years ago. I am keeping this review short and sweet since this was a solid 4.5 star read!

I would definitely read a future book by this author. Thank you to Lake Union Publishing, Laura Barrow, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced reader’s copy.

I really enjoyed this book. Families can be messy, and the one written about in Call the Canaries Home was certainly messy. But, also full of love and loyalty and heart. Lots of tragedy and difficult circumstances but through it all there was Meemaw holding the family together, loving and raising her three granddaughters in the best way she knew. I loved this family. Meemaw was a typical southern grandma, with a rough exterior and a tender heart. The three girls suffered and benefited, grew apart and grew together, and there was just so much to love about these characters. So beautifully written.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

Call the Canaries Home is a very nuanced story about family and the secrets that stay hidden. I loved all the characters, especially meemaw! I thought they were all so real and I loved their growth throughout the book. I enjoyed the mystery itself, it kept me guessing until the very end! The multiple character format is one that I usually love but in this book it is a little confusing and slow.