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In the rural Colorado ski town of Lodgepole two families are torn apart by tragedy!

The first happened on the 28 February 1991 when 17-year-old Angie DeLuca and her 18-year-old boyfriend Julian Dumont were skiing with Angie’s younger sister Diana (7), when Diana lost control, hit a tree, and was killed.

The second occurred over twenty years later on the 13th October 2016. Angie and her husband David Sheehan were awoken in the middle of the night by gunshots. They find their 13-year-old daughter Nora standing in the doorway of her 14-year-old brother Nico’s bedroom, covered in blood, holding a gun. She shot her brother �� not one, not two, but three times �� all at close range.

Penitence was impacting, emotive, eye-opening, thought-provoking, realistic contemporary literary fiction, crime, and family saga, with a focus on relationship dynamics, and interpersonal conflict. I wouldn’t categorise it as a courtroom drama, but there was a fair bit of time spent navigating legal issues and creating a defence strategy. The characters were complex, sympathetic, and morally grey �� damaged and broken by tragedy and pain, secrets and lies, and grief, loss, and blame. Penitence dealt with serious social issues not limited to gun violence, racism, sentencing disparities and treatment of young offenders in the justice and prison systems, alcoholism, depression, mental health, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Alzheimer’s disease, and juvenile Huntington’s disease.

The writing was eloquent and moving, with vivid and creative description. The prologue immediately immersed me in the plot as it jumped from character to character explaining what each was doing at the exact moment teenage Nora sat shivering in a jail cell. From there chapters alternated between four POV’s: Angie, Nora, Julian, and Martine Dumont (Julian’s mother/Nora’s lawyer). And the chapters were on the lengthy side. Which led to some pacing issues the further the book progressed, particularly with the 1990’s �� to early 2000’s timeline, which tended to drag in places. There was one other reason that prevented this from being a five-star read for me, which was more my issue rather than a failure on the books part, but because it’s too much of a spoiler only peek if you’ve read the book or have no intention of picking it up. (view spoiler)[I knew going in that this wasn’t going to be a thriller, but I was still expecting more twists relating to Diana‘s accident and Nico‘s murder, and admit, I felt a little disappointed by the end. (hide spoiler)]

Penitence was Kristin Koval’s debut and she’s definitely an author I’ll be keeping my eye on. The comparisons to Jodi Piccoult, Celeste Ng, and Angie Kim are accurate and deserving.