News & Features » July 2015 » The Anger Meridian Receives STARRED Review from Shelf Awareness!

The Anger Meridian Receives STARRED Review from Shelf Awareness!

We’re thrilled to share that The Anger Meridian — the first new novel in over ten years by acclaimed author Kaylie Jones — has received a STARRED review from Shelf Awareness! Click here or see below to read the full review:

★ Merryn is up late at night, awaiting and fearing her husband’s drunken homecoming, when she opens the door to find two policemen announcing that he has been killed in a car accident. She quickly bundles up their nine-year-old daughter, the precocious Tenney, and leaves Dallas, Texas, for her mother’s home in San Miguel de Allende, in central Mexico.

The rest of Kaylie Jones’s striking novel, The Anger Meridian, is set in San Miguel, where Merryn’s mother, Bibi, presides over an opulent home and her frightened daughter’s life. As Merryn struggles to navigate her husband’s legacy (the FBI has followed her to Mexico to investigate his business dealings) and her and Tenney’s future, she has the opportunity to confront many dishonesties, including her own. Lying is one of The Anger Meridian‘s central themes.

The tone of Jones’s writing quivers with tension from the opening page. Merryn is traumatized, anxious, grinds her teeth at night; she behaves like an abuse victim. But where does her damage come from? And whom should she—and the reader—trust? A handsome American expat doctor, a lawyer friend of the family, a local yoga teacher, the members of Bibi’s entourage, and clever Tenney each offer different angles on Merryn’s life. In the end, there are several puzzles to untangle in this lovely, finely plotted novel, which highlights colorful San Miguel and the complexities of family, loyalty, and honesty. The Anger Meridian is at once a suspenseful mystery and a superlatively gripping story of self-discovery. —Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Discover: A newly widowed woman is forced to face her own secrets, in vibrant San Miguel de Allende.

Congratulations, Kaylie!

Posted: Jul 27, 2015

Category: News | Tags: Akashic Insider, book review, Kaylie Jones, News, Review, reviews, Shelf Awareness, starred review, The Anger Meridian