Looking For a Good Book

A small town, deep in the Andes Mountains, has some dark secrets. There is an unexplained death of a woman, Nita, who was well loved by everyone in the community, including a poor, misfit youth named Alberto. Alberto stumbles upon a dead body that resembles Nita. The woman is covered in feathers and Alberto is convinced she is Nita, an angel who has fallen to earth. With no other identity to ascribe to the woman, the small, rural community tends to accept the superstitions and hints of magic and supernatural.

Years later and some Americans arrive to town in order to experience the local festival. One of the visitors bears an uncanny resemblance to the still beloved Nita. But the American has a less than positive opinion of the pagan rituals she’s observed, which creates a rift between the cultures and sets up a clash between reason and belief.

This book was one of my earliest Amazon First Reads selections. The supernatural and mysticism aspects appealed to me and I figured the whole purpose of the First Reads program was to look at new authors.

Author Jennifer Skutelsky’s writing is vivid and the exploration of mysticism is really nicely done.  I liked how the ‘unexplainable’ aspect seemed to seep in everywhere without drawing a lot of attention to itself.

The characters, though, are not nearly as well pictured. Nita is everything to everyone and every other woman is Nita-like. And yet we don’t know her. The boy, Alberto, who brings us into the story, disappears and the closest we have to a main protagonist is the local doctor, Gregory, who loved Nita.

The story is … well, I’m not sure what the story is.  Is it about culture clash?  Is it about belief v. fact? Is it just a murder mystery? It opens as such.  Or is it a dark fantasy? It could be any combination of those things but I don’t get the sense that Skutelsky had a specific intent.

Looking for a good book? Grave of Hummingbirds by Jennifer Skutelsky has interesting ideas but the characters and story don’t quite bear it out.

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Grave of Hummingbirds

author: Jennifer Skutelsky

publisher: Little A

ISBN: 9781503952713

paperback, 204 pages