My Sunshine Away (Walsh)

Book Reviews
"There are so many books out there," Walsh told Publishers Weekly. "I just got really lucky with this one." Lucky, yes. Talented, definitely. Walsh's choices of setting, plot, character development, narrative voice and structure make My Sunshine Away a rich, unexpected, exceptional book.
Chicago Tribune


My Sunshine Away is also simply, like [Harper] Lee’s novel, a great work of fiction. It’s a page-turning thriller with a heartbreaking crime and an intriguing cast of suspects. But it’s also a love story to Louisiana, with passages that force the reader to pause and contemplate the ‘wrong-ended telescoping’ that gives the state a bad reputation…. It’s a book about love and forgiveness and family and hope….Turning the pages with be a necessary treat.… [Walsh’s] haunting, lyrical novel will compel you to look back on your own life’s mysteries, your own childhood fog.
Fort Worth Star Telegram


Walsh’s novel is both tenderly nostalgic and a window into a unique and specific corner of America. The narration moves seamlessly.... Despite the dark subject matter, this book is often charming, and thoroughly immersive.
Publishers Weekly


Much more than a simple coming-of-age story; it is a rumination on how events in one’s life can appear differently depending on where and when they are experienced and recalled.... Rarely does a new author display the skill to develop a page-turner with such a literary tone. Readers of both popular and literary fiction will get their fixes from this novel.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Suspenseful, compassionate, and absorbing, Walsh’s word-perfect rendering of the doubts, insecurities, bravado, and idealism of teens deserves to be placed in the hands of readers of Tom Franklin, Hannah Pittard, and Jeffrey Eugenides
Booklist


(Starred review.) Recalls the best of Pat Conroy: the rich Southern atmosphere, the interplay of darkness and light in adolescence, the combination of brisk narrative suspense with philosophical musings on memory, manhood, and truth.... Celebrate, fiction lovers: The gods of Southern gothic storytelling have inducted a junior member.
Kirkus Reviews