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This Must Be the Place
A sudden death, a never-mailed postcard, and a long-buried secret set the stage for a luminous and heart-breakingly real novel about lost souls finding one another.
The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the three eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small, quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown, devastated by the death of his wife, carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wife's mementos and keepsakes, and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago, addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story—one of a powerful friendship, a lost love, and a secret that, if revealed, could change everything that Mona, Oneida, and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love—how deeply it runs, how strong it makes us, and how even when all seems lost, how tightly it brings us together. With emotional accuracy and great energy, This Must Be the Place introduces memorable, charming characters that refuse to be forgotten.
The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the three eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small, quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown, devastated by the death of his wife, carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wife's mementos and keepsakes, and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago, addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story—one of a powerful friendship, a lost love, and a secret that, if revealed, could change everything that Mona, Oneida, and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love—how deeply it runs, how strong it makes us, and how even when all seems lost, how tightly it brings us together. With emotional accuracy and great energy, This Must Be the Place introduces memorable, charming characters that refuse to be forgotten.
350 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
51 people are currently reading
3053 people want to read
About the author
Kate Racculia
3 books873 followersKate is a novelist living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her third novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2019.
Kate was a teenage bassoonist, and studied illustration, design, Jane Austen, and Canada at the University of Buffalo. She moved to Boston to get her MFA from Emerson College, and stuck around for 11 years. She has been a cartoonist, a planetarium operator, a movie and music reviewer, a coffee jerk, a bookseller, a designer, a finance marketing proposal writer, and a fundraising prospect researcher. She teaches online for Grub Street, works at her local public library, and sings in the oldest Bach choir in America.
Kate was a teenage bassoonist, and studied illustration, design, Jane Austen, and Canada at the University of Buffalo. She moved to Boston to get her MFA from Emerson College, and stuck around for 11 years. She has been a cartoonist, a planetarium operator, a movie and music reviewer, a coffee jerk, a bookseller, a designer, a finance marketing proposal writer, and a fundraising prospect researcher. She teaches online for Grub Street, works at her local public library, and sings in the oldest Bach choir in America.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 394 reviews
August 10, 2010
I chose this book because it got a glowing review in People magazine. I know, People might not be the best source for literary recommendations, but I find reviews by high-faluting, snobby literary types to be just as unreliable.
I figured this book would be good in a quietly charming kind of way. You know, like the kind of book that is enjoyable not so much for the dramatic plot twists, but because of good writing and likable characters. While this book did have the latter two, it just somehow didn't work for me. The main problem was that there was only one big, mysterious secret to be revealed, and it was so easy to figure out very early on. I just felt like I was being strung along for like 200 pages, and the carrot dangling in front of me wasn't even all that interesting. Also this book suffered from the presence of a subplot about a character who was irrelevant to the main story. I figured the main story and the subplot would end up being related in the end, but no.
This would have made a good short story. As a novel, it felt like it was ridiculously padded with nauseating over-description of EVERYTHING. It was as if the author was paid by the word.
I only bothered to finish this book because I got it through inter-library loan, and somehow I felt I owed it to the librarians and the guy who drives the library truck to at least finish the book. Adding to this sense of obligation was the fact that I realized I was the very first library patron to crack this book, which I actually found more exciting than the story itself.
I figured this book would be good in a quietly charming kind of way. You know, like the kind of book that is enjoyable not so much for the dramatic plot twists, but because of good writing and likable characters. While this book did have the latter two, it just somehow didn't work for me. The main problem was that there was only one big, mysterious secret to be revealed, and it was so easy to figure out very early on. I just felt like I was being strung along for like 200 pages, and the carrot dangling in front of me wasn't even all that interesting. Also this book suffered from the presence of a subplot about a character who was irrelevant to the main story. I figured the main story and the subplot would end up being related in the end, but no.
This would have made a good short story. As a novel, it felt like it was ridiculously padded with nauseating over-description of EVERYTHING. It was as if the author was paid by the word.
I only bothered to finish this book because I got it through inter-library loan, and somehow I felt I owed it to the librarians and the guy who drives the library truck to at least finish the book. Adding to this sense of obligation was the fact that I realized I was the very first library patron to crack this book, which I actually found more exciting than the story itself.
November 12, 2013
Amy Rook dies in a tragic car accident and her husband, Arthur Rook finds a shoebox of mementos with a strange postcard addressed to a Mona Jones in Ruby Falls boardinghouse. He decides to run off and find out about what this postcard could mean and who Mona Jones was and why he hadn't heard of her before...
Enter Mona Jones, a chef extraordinaire, mother of Oneida Jones, owner of a boardinghouse full of characters. What started out as an interesting mystery slowly becomes overwrought with useless chapters and characters that go nowhere. I became so bored with this one that I had to force myself to finish it. I suddenly didn't even care how this one ended, and it seemed to keep going on and on and on...
Enter Mona Jones, a chef extraordinaire, mother of Oneida Jones, owner of a boardinghouse full of characters. What started out as an interesting mystery slowly becomes overwrought with useless chapters and characters that go nowhere. I became so bored with this one that I had to force myself to finish it. I suddenly didn't even care how this one ended, and it seemed to keep going on and on and on...
January 27, 2011
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
The main problem with overedited literary debuts from precocious MFAers, in my opinion, is not that they're bad but rather so damn mediocre; take for example Kate Racculia's recent This Must Be the Place, which would be hard to point at in any particular place and say that it's actively bad, but nonetheless has all the impact of a lukewarm watery noodle being slapped lightly against the wrist. It starts with a nicely dark premise, which is the reason I picked it up in the first place -- that after the accidental death of his goofy special-effects-industry girlfriend in Los Angeles, a genial photographer discovers a shoebox full of artifacts from a troubled childhood she preferred not talking about, which prompts him to make a quiet visit to the small town where so many of his lover's unspoken secrets are buried, staying at a boarding house run by the dead woman's estranged best friend and trying to observe things fly-on-the-wall style for as long as he can get away with it. But the problem with so many of these academic novels based on interesting premises is the same problem here, that all its liveliness has been workshopped right out of it, leaving a Prozaced book that just sort of sits there like a white guy in a beige suit eating a bowl of mashed potatoes; conflicts between characters are dialed down to a dull murmur, while all quirkiness and peril is filtered down to the level of a typical Lifetime cable movie. These books are always worth at least taking a chance on, because you never know when you'll discover a hidden gem, and Racculia for sure is a confident writer who knows her way around a page; but now that she's out of school, it's time for her to sit down and write a book that is uniquely hers, full of the kind of memorable turns that are only hinted at here in her first novel. I look forward to that book, but with this one advise people to proceed with caution.
Out of 10: 7.9
The main problem with overedited literary debuts from precocious MFAers, in my opinion, is not that they're bad but rather so damn mediocre; take for example Kate Racculia's recent This Must Be the Place, which would be hard to point at in any particular place and say that it's actively bad, but nonetheless has all the impact of a lukewarm watery noodle being slapped lightly against the wrist. It starts with a nicely dark premise, which is the reason I picked it up in the first place -- that after the accidental death of his goofy special-effects-industry girlfriend in Los Angeles, a genial photographer discovers a shoebox full of artifacts from a troubled childhood she preferred not talking about, which prompts him to make a quiet visit to the small town where so many of his lover's unspoken secrets are buried, staying at a boarding house run by the dead woman's estranged best friend and trying to observe things fly-on-the-wall style for as long as he can get away with it. But the problem with so many of these academic novels based on interesting premises is the same problem here, that all its liveliness has been workshopped right out of it, leaving a Prozaced book that just sort of sits there like a white guy in a beige suit eating a bowl of mashed potatoes; conflicts between characters are dialed down to a dull murmur, while all quirkiness and peril is filtered down to the level of a typical Lifetime cable movie. These books are always worth at least taking a chance on, because you never know when you'll discover a hidden gem, and Racculia for sure is a confident writer who knows her way around a page; but now that she's out of school, it's time for her to sit down and write a book that is uniquely hers, full of the kind of memorable turns that are only hinted at here in her first novel. I look forward to that book, but with this one advise people to proceed with caution.
Out of 10: 7.9
April 3, 2024
I was intrigued by the summary of this book, though it's not a genre I'd usually pick up ~WOW am I glad I did!
This was a refreshing read that was hard to put down. There are several main characters in the book and all of them are accessible and fascinating in their own right (which is not an easy feat, mind you). Even though I didn't love all of the characters immediately, the more I read, the more endeared I became. Racculia jumps from character to character advancing the story from different points of view and each character's recollections, but not once did it feel disjointed or choppy. It left me craving more of each person's story and Racculia doesn't disappoint on that front either.
I loved the entire concept of the plot ~the rippling effect one unsent postcard could have on the lives of so many. So unfold the secrets of the past, and possibly the key to the future, with twists and turns I never imagined. By the end of the book the characters seemed like old friends with whom I didn't want to lose touch...
READ MORE: http://girlsjustreading.blogspot.com/...
This was a refreshing read that was hard to put down. There are several main characters in the book and all of them are accessible and fascinating in their own right (which is not an easy feat, mind you). Even though I didn't love all of the characters immediately, the more I read, the more endeared I became. Racculia jumps from character to character advancing the story from different points of view and each character's recollections, but not once did it feel disjointed or choppy. It left me craving more of each person's story and Racculia doesn't disappoint on that front either.
I loved the entire concept of the plot ~the rippling effect one unsent postcard could have on the lives of so many. So unfold the secrets of the past, and possibly the key to the future, with twists and turns I never imagined. By the end of the book the characters seemed like old friends with whom I didn't want to lose touch...
READ MORE: http://girlsjustreading.blogspot.com/...
July 5, 2023
Good luck with a random pick from the library shelf! This had great characters, a nice mother daughter situation, some young romance and a touch of mystery. And set outside of Syracuse!
July 13, 2010
The story begins with a boardwalk scene, a young girl, and a postcard.
We then leap ahead sixteen years to a couple living an ordinary life in LA; he, Arthur Rook, is a photographer, and she, Amy Henderson Rook, creates special effects in movies. They are just living day to day.
Then it all changes with a freak accident that leaves Amy dead and Arthur blindsided. Armed with a pink shoebox containing Amy's collection of objects he sees as "clues," and with a postcard and an address in Ruby Falls, NY, Arthur takes off on a journey toward answers.
His search leads him to the Darby-Jones boarding house and the proprietor Desdemona (Mona) Jones, whose life is anything but ordinary, surrounded as she is by a cast of intriguing characters who are the residents. Her daughter Oneida, awkward and friendless, is the part of her life that is important and real. And the past—the part of her life that was connected to Amy Henderson—is not something she talks about.
Arthur's residency in the house begins mysteriously; he says nothing about Amy or her box. Instead, he tries to sort through clues he finds here and there. Then an accident and an injury creates a shift between Arthur and Mona, as she sees him in a new light; someone who needs her. She nurses him back to health, they go out on jobs together (she is a wedding cake baker, he does the photography), and in this process of a developing alliance, they begin to share bits and pieces of their past.
Told from the perspective of the primary characters—Arthur, Amy, Mona, and Oneida—this story unfolds gradually into a multi-layered tale of human connections.
I liked the author's way of slowly revealing the secrets, so that when the bits and pieces were brought to light, I was stunned, but at the same time, I thought "oh, yes, of course!" There was something quirky and endearing about each of the characters that made me care greatly about what would happen to them.
From the "before" until the "after," which was like an epilogue eight years later, the reader was gifted with a wonderfully satisfying feeling of fulfillment.
A very unique story that I will not forget, "This Must Be the Place: A Novel" resonated with me in the way that satisfying stories often do, which is why I decided on a 4 starred review. The only reason I didn't grant 5 stars was that the back and forth progression of the story (from the adult characters, the past, the present, and the teenage characters) left me occasionally disconnected from the flow of the tale. Nevertheless, the story was fascinating and memorable.
We then leap ahead sixteen years to a couple living an ordinary life in LA; he, Arthur Rook, is a photographer, and she, Amy Henderson Rook, creates special effects in movies. They are just living day to day.
Then it all changes with a freak accident that leaves Amy dead and Arthur blindsided. Armed with a pink shoebox containing Amy's collection of objects he sees as "clues," and with a postcard and an address in Ruby Falls, NY, Arthur takes off on a journey toward answers.
His search leads him to the Darby-Jones boarding house and the proprietor Desdemona (Mona) Jones, whose life is anything but ordinary, surrounded as she is by a cast of intriguing characters who are the residents. Her daughter Oneida, awkward and friendless, is the part of her life that is important and real. And the past—the part of her life that was connected to Amy Henderson—is not something she talks about.
Arthur's residency in the house begins mysteriously; he says nothing about Amy or her box. Instead, he tries to sort through clues he finds here and there. Then an accident and an injury creates a shift between Arthur and Mona, as she sees him in a new light; someone who needs her. She nurses him back to health, they go out on jobs together (she is a wedding cake baker, he does the photography), and in this process of a developing alliance, they begin to share bits and pieces of their past.
Told from the perspective of the primary characters—Arthur, Amy, Mona, and Oneida—this story unfolds gradually into a multi-layered tale of human connections.
I liked the author's way of slowly revealing the secrets, so that when the bits and pieces were brought to light, I was stunned, but at the same time, I thought "oh, yes, of course!" There was something quirky and endearing about each of the characters that made me care greatly about what would happen to them.
From the "before" until the "after," which was like an epilogue eight years later, the reader was gifted with a wonderfully satisfying feeling of fulfillment.
A very unique story that I will not forget, "This Must Be the Place: A Novel" resonated with me in the way that satisfying stories often do, which is why I decided on a 4 starred review. The only reason I didn't grant 5 stars was that the back and forth progression of the story (from the adult characters, the past, the present, and the teenage characters) left me occasionally disconnected from the flow of the tale. Nevertheless, the story was fascinating and memorable.
December 1, 2010
Our hero is rendered speechless by his first visit to "In & Out" and meets his future wife when she rescues him by ordering for him. This cute-meet foreshadows the rest of the story. His wife dies dramatically in the first chapter and in his despair he tears apart their apartment looking for. . .? a shoe box filled with his wife's adolescent memorabilia. This naturally leads him to immediately leave L.A. and head for her hometown of Ruby Falls, N.Y. There he tracks down his wife's best friend who runs a boarding house. He becomes a boarder without any mention of his deceased wife. After a week of moping around and giving everyone the silent treatment, he suffers a nasty fall down the stairs. The best friend was nursing him back to health when I closed the door on this cozy scene. Enough said.
July 6, 2010
We know that growing up can be difficult. Coming of age isn't easy, but it was especially onerous for Oneida Jones. And, no, as she'll be the first to tell you - she was not named after a spoon.)
In this imaginative, entertaining debut novel Oneida's home is a boarding house, the Darby-Jones in Ruby Falls, New York, run by her mother, Mona. (There is not a father in the picture as Mona had returned to Ruby Falls years earlier unwed but with baby Oneida in her arms) As if cooking and cleaning for her tenants were not enough Mona also bakes cakes, gorgeous tall wedding cakes to supplement her income. Among the boarders are Roberta Draper known as Bert, an 87-year-old curmudgeon who occupies the top floor. "She had never married, kept herself cloistered in her rooms, and made no secret of her disapproval of everything." Also in residence are Anna, the town veterinarian and Sherman, a high school shop teacher with whom Anna was having an off again on again affair.
This was the milieu in which Oneida lived and grew, which might be a challenge for any young one but especially so for Oneida as she had no friends and she was a freak. "It was nonnegotiable. It was absolute.....but it wasn't until after her twelfth birthday that she ever considered the possibility that it was something to be embraced rathr than raged against." Why did her fellow sixth graders consider her to be a freak? Because she had "huge frizzy hair and dark eyebrows that touched in the middle of her forehead, and she demanded that Mr. Buckley teach them about Japanese internment camps." Obviously, Oneida was unique, and a few steps ahead of her contemporaries.
Life changes for everyone at the Darby-Jones with the arrival of Arthur Rook, a mysterious sad young man bearing little luggage and most importantly to him a pink shoe box. He recently lost his wife, Amy, in a tragic accident and he came to the Darby-Jones because of an unsent postcard to Mona which he found in the shoe box. He feels there is something to learn here, that he can better come to know Amy who had been Mona's best friend from childhood through high school.
As the story progresses it becomes evident that there are secrets at the Darby-Jones, especially one guarded by Mona. Kate Racculia, a wise author, drops bits of information along the way that keeps us turning pages.
For this reader the novel should have ended when the final secret is revealed rather than an extended explorati0on of what the future held which did seem a bit contrived as if attempting to tie up every loose end. What ever the case, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a meritorious first novel, and we look forward to more from Kate Racculia.
Gail Cooke
December 26, 2014
Before you crack open this book, understand something vital: Whatever you think you know about these characters, you're, at best, only half-right. That doesn't mean that this is a mind-bender of Murakami proportions, though there are some pretty significant twists. It means that the characters have depth.
This is the warm, sometimes whimsical story of Amy Rook and the people she left behind. There is Arthur, her shattered husband; Mona, her erstwhile best friend, the girl who always cleaned up after her; and Oneida, Mona's quirky teenage daughter. On their periphery is Eugene/Wendy, boyfriend of Oneida and son of Astor, a security guard with a surprising extracurricular activity.
Mona runs a boarding house populated by quirky side characters and fondant cake creations. She makes a decent living baking wedding cakes, but has a hard time living down her spotty reputation about town (the fictional Ruby Falls, New York). As the story progresses, however, we learn that all is not as it seems, and Mona's reputation is built upon a foundation of rumor and misunderstanding that she has done nothing to contradict. When a lost and grief-stricken Arthur shows up at her boardinghouse seeking answers about his late wife, she realizes that her days of truth-dodging are over.
The story unfolds from four alternating points of view: Arthur's, Mona's, Oneida's, and Eugene's. All we have of Amy are the artifacts and people she's left behind, so all we gain is an incomplete picture of a woman who, for better or worse, was quite complex. It would be easy to dismiss her as a selfish, heartless woman who probably drank too much (several flashbacks feature her in a tipsy or drunken state). But all we have are a handful of memories and revelations that paint a rather fuzzy picture. Did I like Amy? Not particularly. That said, I also recognize that my experience with her was extraordinarily limited.
This is quite a debut. It's difficult to categorize This Must Be the Place, with its mixed bag of young adult, chick lit, and romance elements. Racculia's writing is simultaneously smart and warm, and her characters are remarkably well-developed. And the banter snaps, crackles, and pops, as all good banter should.
(Disclaimer: Henry Holt and Company sent me a review copy of this book.)
This is the warm, sometimes whimsical story of Amy Rook and the people she left behind. There is Arthur, her shattered husband; Mona, her erstwhile best friend, the girl who always cleaned up after her; and Oneida, Mona's quirky teenage daughter. On their periphery is Eugene/Wendy, boyfriend of Oneida and son of Astor, a security guard with a surprising extracurricular activity.
Mona runs a boarding house populated by quirky side characters and fondant cake creations. She makes a decent living baking wedding cakes, but has a hard time living down her spotty reputation about town (the fictional Ruby Falls, New York). As the story progresses, however, we learn that all is not as it seems, and Mona's reputation is built upon a foundation of rumor and misunderstanding that she has done nothing to contradict. When a lost and grief-stricken Arthur shows up at her boardinghouse seeking answers about his late wife, she realizes that her days of truth-dodging are over.
The story unfolds from four alternating points of view: Arthur's, Mona's, Oneida's, and Eugene's. All we have of Amy are the artifacts and people she's left behind, so all we gain is an incomplete picture of a woman who, for better or worse, was quite complex. It would be easy to dismiss her as a selfish, heartless woman who probably drank too much (several flashbacks feature her in a tipsy or drunken state). But all we have are a handful of memories and revelations that paint a rather fuzzy picture. Did I like Amy? Not particularly. That said, I also recognize that my experience with her was extraordinarily limited.
This is quite a debut. It's difficult to categorize This Must Be the Place, with its mixed bag of young adult, chick lit, and romance elements. Racculia's writing is simultaneously smart and warm, and her characters are remarkably well-developed. And the banter snaps, crackles, and pops, as all good banter should.
(Disclaimer: Henry Holt and Company sent me a review copy of this book.)
July 1, 2011
I am a sucker for originality. I loved this book! Kate Racculia has created an original story, with original characters and writes with a beautiful original voice. Just up my alley!! This Must Be the Place is a story of people who are not seeing their world clearly due to a series of secrets which keeps them at arms length from the people in their lives. As they find love, they find the importance of the secrets diminishes, and each of them are in a position to see and feel what matters to them and what is available to them in their lives. All of this is done with a great sense of humor and wonderfully descriptive prose.
Arthur, a photographer, and his wife Amy, a special effects genius making monsters for films, meet, fall in love, marry, and live in Los Angeles. When Amy is killed accidentally, Arthur realizes he has almost no knowledge of Amy prior to her moving to Los Angeles and has no idea what her final wishes may have been. In a closet he discovers a shoe box containing mementoes of Amy's life including a post card written by Amy to her friend Mona sixteen years ago, but never mailed. Arthur believes the post card will lead him to Amy's past and help him to see the direction of his future. He heads to Ruby Falls, NY to find Mona and hopefully the answers he seeks. Meanwhile, Mona is a single mother running a boarding house, baking wedding cakes and raising her daughter, Oneida. But, Mona is keeping the secrets of her and Amy's lives and is uncertain if they should be shared with Arthur. As the story unfolds, we find there are other secrets being kept by tennants of the Darby-Jones boarding house, by Oneida and by Oneida's classmates. As the characters risk trusting others with their secrets, they learn to trust themselves, as well, and begin to see how their past ties them to their future.
A book to savor. A laugh out loud, yet poignant tale of friends, family and others connected through Amy who discover that love is still present or can grow despite the revelation of the worst of secrets.
Arthur, a photographer, and his wife Amy, a special effects genius making monsters for films, meet, fall in love, marry, and live in Los Angeles. When Amy is killed accidentally, Arthur realizes he has almost no knowledge of Amy prior to her moving to Los Angeles and has no idea what her final wishes may have been. In a closet he discovers a shoe box containing mementoes of Amy's life including a post card written by Amy to her friend Mona sixteen years ago, but never mailed. Arthur believes the post card will lead him to Amy's past and help him to see the direction of his future. He heads to Ruby Falls, NY to find Mona and hopefully the answers he seeks. Meanwhile, Mona is a single mother running a boarding house, baking wedding cakes and raising her daughter, Oneida. But, Mona is keeping the secrets of her and Amy's lives and is uncertain if they should be shared with Arthur. As the story unfolds, we find there are other secrets being kept by tennants of the Darby-Jones boarding house, by Oneida and by Oneida's classmates. As the characters risk trusting others with their secrets, they learn to trust themselves, as well, and begin to see how their past ties them to their future.
A book to savor. A laugh out loud, yet poignant tale of friends, family and others connected through Amy who discover that love is still present or can grow despite the revelation of the worst of secrets.
May 29, 2010
"This Must Be The Place," Kate Racculia's debut novel, is tricky to classify. Part coming-of-age story, part romance, and part mystery -- but all entertaining.
Racculia's main characters are widower Arthur Rook, boarding house owner Mona Jones and Mona's daughter Oneida. Rook comes to stay at the Darby-Jones boarding house, operated by Mona, after his wife's death. Throw into the mix that Rook's wife was Mona's beat friend in high school for the first in a series of complications. Add a cast of entertaining boarders, Oneida's high school anxieties and issues -- and you've got the basis for the story.
It's hard to review this story without revealing spoilers, so suffice it to say that Rook is trying to understand his late wife better through a shoebox full of small belongings -- including a postcard addressed to Mona -- while Oneida tries to figure out why her mother is the way she is, and why high school is so horrible. Mona, in the mean while, is the guardian of the biggest mystery of all. The way the stories intertwine and ultimately come to their conclusion is packaged in delightful prose and entertaining characters.
Highly recommended.
(Review based on uncorrected advance proof.)
Racculia's main characters are widower Arthur Rook, boarding house owner Mona Jones and Mona's daughter Oneida. Rook comes to stay at the Darby-Jones boarding house, operated by Mona, after his wife's death. Throw into the mix that Rook's wife was Mona's beat friend in high school for the first in a series of complications. Add a cast of entertaining boarders, Oneida's high school anxieties and issues -- and you've got the basis for the story.
It's hard to review this story without revealing spoilers, so suffice it to say that Rook is trying to understand his late wife better through a shoebox full of small belongings -- including a postcard addressed to Mona -- while Oneida tries to figure out why her mother is the way she is, and why high school is so horrible. Mona, in the mean while, is the guardian of the biggest mystery of all. The way the stories intertwine and ultimately come to their conclusion is packaged in delightful prose and entertaining characters.
Highly recommended.
(Review based on uncorrected advance proof.)
August 28, 2011
I was intrigued by the premise of this novel by a first-time author. It's the story of a single mother and her daughter who run a boarding house in a small, upstate New York village, and a widower/lost soul who is 'guided' to them after his wife suddenly dies.
The writing was very uneven; at times captivating and beautifully realized, at other times unbelievably muddled, confusing and unclear. It felt as though an editor had lost patience with parts of the book, and simply deleted some of the details necessary to understand how the story had suddenly moved from one point to the next. Over all, reading this was a bit of a roller coaster ride as the book veered from satisfying to baffling. Part of the problem I suspect, was that the author simply tried to do too much within the confines of one book--tell the coming of age story of the daughter, describe the interior life of the mother who refuses to reveal the secret of her daughter's paternity, while at the same time explain the emotional tumult experienced by the widower as he tries to deal with his overwhelming grief.
The author does display a lot of promise, in my opinion, but needs more focus and a much better editor.
A first effort by this new author, which would mitigate some of my criticism, at least for now.
The writing was very uneven; at times captivating and beautifully realized, at other times unbelievably muddled, confusing and unclear. It felt as though an editor had lost patience with parts of the book, and simply deleted some of the details necessary to understand how the story had suddenly moved from one point to the next. Over all, reading this was a bit of a roller coaster ride as the book veered from satisfying to baffling. Part of the problem I suspect, was that the author simply tried to do too much within the confines of one book--tell the coming of age story of the daughter, describe the interior life of the mother who refuses to reveal the secret of her daughter's paternity, while at the same time explain the emotional tumult experienced by the widower as he tries to deal with his overwhelming grief.
The author does display a lot of promise, in my opinion, but needs more focus and a much better editor.
A first effort by this new author, which would mitigate some of my criticism, at least for now.
December 12, 2014
I started listening to this as an audiobook while we were travelling because I had enjoyed the author's previous audiobook (Bellweather Rhapsody) well enough. It was a bit predictable (and we are talking me here--I almost never figure out plot twists ahead of time) but I did like the characters. The narrator wasn't as good as the Bellweather Rhapsody narrator, but she was OK. A reasonably pleasant way to pass the time, but like BR, it was too long. It needed editing! The ending dragged a bit, which is why I listened to about 80% of it within a week or so and then it took me another 4 months to listen to the last 20%. Poor Kate Racculia; I think she has potential! I'll still check out the next book she writes because I think she is inventive--she just needs polish.
September 15, 2020
What makes Kate Racculia’s other books so precious to me is her wonderful characters and how much they love each other. Plot is very much secondary. In this, though, the characters were awful - in personality, motive/believability, and to each other - and the only thing that kept driving me to the end was the plot (which ended on an anticlimactic note). However, while the impact wasn’t there, her lovely prose certainly was. She’s a wonderful writer with beautiful things to say; she just didn’t pull it off for me in her first book. Thank goodness I read her second and third books first.
August 21, 2010
I'm definitely waffling between 2 and 3 stars on this one. I like the idea, I liked the setting, I liked SOME of the characters, but I didn't much care for the delivery. You can tell that it is a first novel. It's overly detailed, manipulatively dramatic, and the big reveal is so transparent you can see it coming the minute you start the book. She does create some interesting side characters, though. I ended up wishing the book was about them.
It's not horrible. It's just decent.
It's not horrible. It's just decent.
July 7, 2021
It is an earnest, melodramatic little book. Charming, but predictable and tied up in a sweet bow in the end. I enjoyed, but it didn't wow.
Read
July 23, 202111 hrs, 220 wpm
February 12, 2020
This is a debut novel with some debut novel things, like the random flash forward when two people become friends. There are also some time shifts that had me confused. It didn't help the library only had an electronic copy, which thwarted me paging through what I had read to clarify things.
Still, I liked the characters, the writing, and there were some really great passages about teen first love. (Debut love?)
Still, I liked the characters, the writing, and there were some really great passages about teen first love. (Debut love?)
June 5, 2021
Actually a 3.5.
January 10, 2022
The characters were charming, but only 3/4 formed. I liked them, but wanted so much more. I’m forgiving because this was a first novel and I have seen what this spectacular author has done since then.
Okay, the mystery wasn’t very mysterious, but it was still resolved and satisfying.
Okay, the mystery wasn’t very mysterious, but it was still resolved and satisfying.
Read
July 9, 2022I love Kate Racculia's characters. This book is her debut but the third of hers I've read. It doesn't have the mild creepiness of her subsequent works but is solid for a debut, and has a definite charm.
Read
September 19, 2022I picked this one up accidentally as I was thinking it was the other book with that title.
I happily read it for the first half but then got bored. I really don’t like reading about teenagers, especially horny ones so lots of the middle got really old, fast. I skipped to the end and I don’t feel like I missed much.
I happily read it for the first half but then got bored. I really don’t like reading about teenagers, especially horny ones so lots of the middle got really old, fast. I skipped to the end and I don’t feel like I missed much.
July 6, 2010
When Amy Henderson dies suddenly, her devastated husband, Arthur Rook, finds a hidden shoebox of mysterious mementos, including a never-mailed postcard which leads him to the Darby-Jones boardinghouse, now run by Amy’s childhood best friend, Mona Jones. The grieving Arthur tries to decipher the meaning of his dead wife’s cryptic souvenirs, and in so doing, threatens to reveal a secret from her past.
“She was so tired of fighting with Amy’s nature. Because it was Amy’s nature to be unknown and unknowable, just as it was Mona’s nature to want more than people ever seemed to be able to give her.
‘I really don’t get it,’ Arthur said. ‘Why she didn’t keep in touch.’
‘Then you don’t know Amy Henderson,’ Mona said.
Arthur recoiled, slapped harder by her words than by any hand. And there were other things she could have said—other things that could have hurt her more. It was tempting to tell him all those other things about his enchanting, enchanted wife…But Mona didn’t get beyond an open mouth. She was stopped by the realization that she wanted to hurt him—really hurt him. Shake him. Smack him. She was sick of this bullshit, she was tired, and she wanted Arthur to grow up and get over it and realize that Amy Henderson had been a human being after all: a human being who could be mean and cowardly and inscrutable and not the essence of eccentric perfection, lost forever. But on the heels of that came another, more disturbing revelation: she wasn’t really mad at Arthur, she was mad at Amy, and Arthur was just her hapless undeserving patsy.”
I was charmed by the quirky and endearing characters in This Must Be The Place by Kate Racculia, each of whom are lost in their own way: gentle Arthur, who is desperately hanging onto his dead wife through the things she left behind; steadfast Mona who has born the stigma of having been an unmarried teenage mom in the small town of Ruby Falls; Oneida, Mona’s daughter, the misunderstood loner at her high school.
“If being a freak meant she was the only one in the room to realize that her teacher was a complete dumb ass, then she’d be a freak and be proud of it. In that moment, she consciously chose the lonely, superior life of freakdom. It was a life she was already living anyway, but she accepted it on the basis that it was better to be lonely and right than stupid with friends.”
I guessed the secret about a third of the way through; however, that did not stop me from being emotionally invested in the fates of Arthur, Mona, and Oneida. Two love stories unfold but I particularly enjoyed Oneida’s, which is a realistic yet sweet portrayal of first love.
Racculia deftly interweaves scenes from the past of the teenage Mona and Amy with the present to reveal what happened 16 years beforehand - what drove Amy to leave Ruby Falls, never to return, and the secret she kept until she died.
Rich with memorable characters and pop culture references (unapologetic use of Clash of the Titans and In-n-Out), This Must Be The Place by Kate Racculia has its bittersweet and funny moments.
“She was so tired of fighting with Amy’s nature. Because it was Amy’s nature to be unknown and unknowable, just as it was Mona’s nature to want more than people ever seemed to be able to give her.
‘I really don’t get it,’ Arthur said. ‘Why she didn’t keep in touch.’
‘Then you don’t know Amy Henderson,’ Mona said.
Arthur recoiled, slapped harder by her words than by any hand. And there were other things she could have said—other things that could have hurt her more. It was tempting to tell him all those other things about his enchanting, enchanted wife…But Mona didn’t get beyond an open mouth. She was stopped by the realization that she wanted to hurt him—really hurt him. Shake him. Smack him. She was sick of this bullshit, she was tired, and she wanted Arthur to grow up and get over it and realize that Amy Henderson had been a human being after all: a human being who could be mean and cowardly and inscrutable and not the essence of eccentric perfection, lost forever. But on the heels of that came another, more disturbing revelation: she wasn’t really mad at Arthur, she was mad at Amy, and Arthur was just her hapless undeserving patsy.”
I was charmed by the quirky and endearing characters in This Must Be The Place by Kate Racculia, each of whom are lost in their own way: gentle Arthur, who is desperately hanging onto his dead wife through the things she left behind; steadfast Mona who has born the stigma of having been an unmarried teenage mom in the small town of Ruby Falls; Oneida, Mona’s daughter, the misunderstood loner at her high school.
“If being a freak meant she was the only one in the room to realize that her teacher was a complete dumb ass, then she’d be a freak and be proud of it. In that moment, she consciously chose the lonely, superior life of freakdom. It was a life she was already living anyway, but she accepted it on the basis that it was better to be lonely and right than stupid with friends.”
I guessed the secret about a third of the way through; however, that did not stop me from being emotionally invested in the fates of Arthur, Mona, and Oneida. Two love stories unfold but I particularly enjoyed Oneida’s, which is a realistic yet sweet portrayal of first love.
Racculia deftly interweaves scenes from the past of the teenage Mona and Amy with the present to reveal what happened 16 years beforehand - what drove Amy to leave Ruby Falls, never to return, and the secret she kept until she died.
Rich with memorable characters and pop culture references (unapologetic use of Clash of the Titans and In-n-Out), This Must Be The Place by Kate Racculia has its bittersweet and funny moments.
September 4, 2013
My feelings about this book are a little mixed. I loved all of the stuff with the teenagers, Oneida & Eugene. I felt those parts were well-written, interesting, and engaging. I believed that they were teenagers acting like teenagers and even though they made mistakes as they muddled through on their way to adulthood, they were still likable & compelling.
[SPOILER BELOW]
I didn't particularly care for the parts with the adults. The tertiary characters, the other ones in the Darby-Jones, were a little baffling. I never understood what any of their motivations were. As for Arthur and Mona, I felt really uncomfortable with their relationship. I find it wildly inappropriate that a woman would start falling for a man who she knows is mourning his wife's death and who is clearly broken. I find it even weirder that he would start falling for her as well. I love my husband & I would like for him to move on if I pass before him, but if he were doing it within a couple of weeks of my death, I'd be side-eying him pretty hard from the Great Beyond. I'm just saying. It's weird.
[END SPOILER]
Also, I figured out the big "secret" within the first few pages of the book.
Even with all my griping, though, I did enjoy it, so I have no intentions of giving it a low rating.
[SPOILER BELOW]
I didn't particularly care for the parts with the adults. The tertiary characters, the other ones in the Darby-Jones, were a little baffling. I never understood what any of their motivations were. As for Arthur and Mona, I felt really uncomfortable with their relationship. I find it wildly inappropriate that a woman would start falling for a man who she knows is mourning his wife's death and who is clearly broken. I find it even weirder that he would start falling for her as well. I love my husband & I would like for him to move on if I pass before him, but if he were doing it within a couple of weeks of my death, I'd be side-eying him pretty hard from the Great Beyond. I'm just saying. It's weird.
[END SPOILER]
Also, I figured out the big "secret" within the first few pages of the book.
Even with all my griping, though, I did enjoy it, so I have no intentions of giving it a low rating.
February 28, 2016
I had added this book to my Amazon wishlist for a while but never got around reading it for nearly two years. I remember that I must have liked something about this author to had added her but after reading this, I'm a bit puzzled. I first off want to start off by saying that there were some things I really really liked. The premise is about a man in his early 30's loses the love of his life to a horrific accident. He is completely grief stricken and unsure of how to proceed with his life. He finds a shoebox of her belongings which leads her to an apartment building run by Mona, who is the former best friend of the main character, Arthur's deceased wife. Mona lives in a building with her daughter, Oneida, along with a cast of some quirky characters who don't factor too heavily into the plot. I felt that the plot dragged, in particular during Arthur and Mona's scenes. My favorite character in this book by far was Oneida. I would have read a teen novel based on her scenes with Eugene and just her. Overall, the book was sometimes a slog to get through, but it was well written and not bad overall.
August 16, 2010
Beautifully written and an interesting premise (a man finds an odd postcard in his deceased wife's things and tries to figure out what it means). I've been trying to figure out why I didn't like this as much as I thought I would (or as much as the reviews might suggest). I think in the end while there were some fabulous secondary characters (Eugene/Wendy and to a certain extent Oneida) I just didn't really connect with Arthur or Mona. I can see why reviews have been good, but I just didn't love this one.
June 1, 2012
I will admit, this book first caught my eye because I liked the Ocean City cover. The postcard that was written but never sent with an apology and the words, "I left you the best parts of myself. You know where to look" is the focus of this story about a heartbroken man whose wife dies in an accident. In finding her shoebox of symbols and memorablia, he sets off on a journey to find out what it all means. It was a book that kept my interest and made me happy enough with its ending.
September 29, 2018
The writing was stellar - dreamy and lovely and full of beautiful moments. Not a lot happens, it’s very quiet and sweet, but there’s a nice depth to the relationships and I loved the end, where she gave you some sneak peeks into the future without doing a “10 years later” sort of thing - I felt like that was very well-handled so that I felt good about closure but still had some things to imagine.
April 12, 2020
This book appears set up like a Hallmark Movie, but has enough grit and dysfunction to avoid becoming one. Still, the “twist” can be seen a mile away and it becomes irritating that the author even tries to disguise or hint at it, it’s so obvious. Some things are wrapped up too neatly at the end, and some characters behave in a way that makes one want to scream. The voiceless character around whom the story is based sounds like a truly terrible person, and that isn’t fully explored.
January 5, 2013
The story was real. The characters seemed real, like I knew them and wanted to join them. It as a soothing, past time read. The style of writing is comfortable, relaxed and real... The story made me look back, nostalgically, at my own life and the people I met along the way - appreciating it all, my life, those people and whatever the future may hold. Inspirational.
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