Riversnow is another triumph for author Tess Thompson. It is the fourth installment in her highly-acclaimed River Valley series, but works equally well as a stand-alone novel.
In each of the River Valley books, the author has focused on a few main characters, while introducing others that appear in future storylines. Readers met Genevieve Banks in Riverstar. When this fourth book opens, we are taken back into the past, to a snowy town in Wisconsin. We are given an emotional view of a terrifying event that takes place when Gennie is a shy fifteen-year-old child. This incident shapes the rest of her life and becomes the foundation of Tess Thompson’s latest novel.
This story is a powerful illustration of how events that happen to us as children take root in our hearts and minds and shape who we become as adults, and how the decisions we make in our lives affect all those that we love—sometimes as much as they do ourselves.
I’ve read each book now in the River Valley series. I’ve enjoyed every one of them for different reasons. Tess Thompson has managed to center her novels largely in one setting—the enchanting town of River Valley— but she’s brought in a cast of characters who are wonderfully diverse, who come from all different backgrounds and who have a variety of experiences that make up who they are. She has deftly woven elements of domestic abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, political corruption and, most of all, love into this collection of tales, making them incredibly real and very relevant.
Although there were many things about the first three novels that I could relate to, Riversnow has touched me the most on a personal level. This was an emotional but satisfying read, and a perfect addition to the River Valley series.