Providence Isn't Always a Good Thing... But This Book, Is (review)

Let’s just start this off by cutting to the chase, hmm? Caroline Kepnes’ newest release, Providence, is one of the most beautiful stories I’ve read in, well… a long, long time. Actually, one of, in ever. 

Yeah, I know… way to build up the suspense and make sure everyone reads to the end of the review, GlamKitty. Well, so be it. I mean, how often does anyone heap that sort of praise on a detective-slash-coming-of-age-slash-supernatural-slash-horror tale (that’s also a love story)? Pretty much never.

But okay, since you don’t want to just take my word for it, let’s peel a layer off the onion and get a taste of Providence...

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Jon is a nice kid. He brings the mouse from one of his classes home from school over the holidays to care for it. He’s kind, funny, quiet and… okay, a little “different” from other kids his age (but especially the other boys, who pick on and bully him mercilessly). 

Chloe is Jon’s only friend, and is all of those things, as well… but she manages to straddle the fence between the “cool” kids, Jon, and, everyone else. No one understands why she’s friends with Jon, but they don’t shun her because of it, either.

When Jon disappears on his way to school one morning, it's nothing more than a momentarily-interesting blip in the lives of everyone in the small New England town— save Jon’s parents, who’re going out of their minds missing their only child, and Chloe.

A few years pass… and then one day, out of the blue, Jon reappears, with a crazy story. (I won’t spoil the details, but suffice it to say he was taken--by someone who had a very specific plan for him in mind--but he can’t remember any of it.)

Here's the catch: Jon doesn’t come back as the Jon everyone remembers—the small, weak boy who was such a ready target for the bullies. This is the New, Improved version—a strapping, handsome young man and… something else, besides.

Again, it’s up to you to read the story to discover what “else” there is, but trust me, you’ll want to… because the unraveling of that mystery (by Jon, by Chloe, and by a detective known as “Eggs” who just can’t let it go)—and, more importantly, the quest by Jon to undo the big “it”—is at the heart of this entire tale. 

There’s only everything Jon (unwillingly) left behind, to try and recapture… but the most important, by far, being the heart of his one-and-only best friend.

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As with her previous books (You, briefly reviewed here, and Hidden Bodies, reviewed here), I'm left feeling sort of stunned; Kepnes is a virtuoso at putting you right in the middle of her main characters’ thoughts, so that you feel what they feel, and are left with no doubt as to the motivations for any of their actions. (It would seem like something every author should do well… but after reading Kepnes, I realize a great many authors fall far short of it, in actuality.)

She also has quite a knack for giving a great feeling of place—and, particularly in Providence, deftly portrays the whole twisted mess of emotions involved in “going back home”.

Literate (as well as literary, with references to Lovecraft woven throughout), sad, hopeful, real, suspenseful, heartfelt, and… yes, utterly, heartwrenchingly beautiful, in the end. I dare you to read Providence and not care about Jon, Chloe, and Eggs… and I dare you not to get at least a little misty-eyed.

~GlamKitty