My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Some books do extract a pound of flesh, literally and this one by Liz Moore definitely tormented and disturbed me much to put it mildly.

Long Bright River begins with a murder but the crime part of it forms the background of the story of 2 sisters who cannot be any more different. Michella or Mickey is a beat police officer doing the rounds where her sister Kelsey has let go of the world and is searching for the next high escaping from reality. Drugs and prostitution are ways of life for the women in the streets of Kensington in Philadelphia but the harrowing and agonizing account of their daily lives tends to rip a part of your soul.

There is a serial killer on the loose who is targeting the women of the streets and not having seen Kelsey for a while, Mickey begins to panic and puts even her job on the line as she begins to investigate her sister’s whereabouts. The story moves between ‘THEN and NOW’ showing us the deep bond between the sisters left to their own devices and in the care of an angry grandmother Gee who takes her bitterness at losing her child onto the innocent souls.

Liz Moore has worked wonders in showcasing the painful reality of drug addiction and the effects it wrecks on the family and the near and dear ones, the grief of relationships lost and even the effects the addiction has on the new born babies.

The story is at most parts bleak but leaves the reader with the feeling of hope that
‘Tomorrow is gonna be a better day’

Deserving more than 5 stars!



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Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn’t be more different. Then, one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.