The Unmaking of June Farrow

Our Review

"Every woman in the Farrow family was different, but the end was always the same."

Words cannot describe how much I loved The Unmaking of June Farrow. I really didn't know what to expect from it but as usual Adrienne Young has written a phenomenal book. 

The Unmaking of June Farrow has a fantastic vibe to it, a small town family mystery with a hell of a lot of suspense. 

The book begins with the death of June's beloved grandma, Margaret. 

"When Margaret Anne Farrow died in her sleep on June 10, 2023, I became the last living Farrow on earth. "

It is clear from the beginning that her gran's last years were not easy for any of them, references to Gran losing her mind are frequently made.

"There weren't many things that were clear, especially in those final years when Gran's mind had all but slipped away, but a burial on this hill at sunset with a fiddle playing in the wind was one of them."

The Farrows have been outsiders in the small mountain town of Jasper for as long as anyone can remember,. The Farrow women are known to be unnusual and to suffer from a curse, a mysterious sickness of the mind.

"To the town of Jasper, I was first known as the Market Street Baby, words made eternal the day the Chronicle put them on the front page.Just before daybreak on October 2, 1989, Clarence Taylor was on his way to open the cafe when he heard the sound of a baby's cry coming from the alley. It took only hours for the whole town to hear about the baby girl in the basket with the birthmark beneath one ear and the locket watch tucked into her blanket."

June is haunted by the legacy of her mother, who disappeared after abandoning her in alley, and whose declining mental health was well known before this event. 

"It had almost been fourteen months since my mother disappeared. There was no shortage of theories on the matter, but no real answers. Susanna had simply walked into the woods one day, her belly swollen with child, and never returned." 

June's gran has always been reluctant to discuss her mother with her, leaving June to go to other members of the community for answers. 

"The easiest and most widely accepted explanation for my mother's strange disappearance was madness the same affliction to befall every woman in my family for as far back as anyone could remember. We were cursed - the Farrow women." 

Adrienne Young is excellent at writing about small towns and the communities. She sets the scene so perfectly you could swear you were actually there. 

"There were things that made this town what it was. The secret of honeysuckle blooming along the black tar roads and the rush of the Adeline River, which cut through the land like the scrape of a knife. The various gazes that followed me and gran on the street and the rumours that skipped in the air no matter how much time had passed. Their stories were nothing compared to the ones gran had regaled me with when she tucked me in to bed as a little girl. The town of Jasper had no idea just how different and strange we were." 

The disappearance of June's mother  is not the only mystery haunting the small town of Jasper. 

"Decades ago, the town's minister had been brutally murdered at the river, though I wasn't sure what truth there was to the grisly details I'd heard murmured over the years. There were still people who still left flowers on his grave and his picture hung in the cafe like the patron saint of Jasper, still watching over his flock. 

My missing mother, on the other hand, had barely warranted a search party."

As the book progresses June's worries about her mental health increases, we learn she has been hearing and seeing strange things with increasing frequency.

"It came for my grandmother, as it came for my mother, and now it had come for me.

For years, the town of Jasper had been watching me,  waiting for the madness to show itself. They didn't know it was already there, brimming beneath the surface.

My future had never been a mystery. I'd known since I was very young what lay ahead, my own and always so sharply visible in the distance. That was why I'd never fall in loveWhy I'd never have a child. Why I'd never seen any point in the dreams that lit the eyes of everyone else around me. I had only one ambition in my simply built life, and that was to be sure the Farrow curse would end with me.

It was as good a place as any to end a story. I wasn't the first Farrow, but I would be the last." 

There is so much to talk about in this book but I don't want to spoil anything so all I will say is that I won't forget about this delightful book for a long time.

Our Final Rating...

6 Months Ago