Dawn Over Dayfield (Otila’s Review)

Title: Dawn Over Dayfield
Author: Karenna Colcroft
Publisher: DSP Publications
Release Date: March 1, 2016
Genre(s): Contemporary / Mystery
Page Count: 189
Reviewed by: Otila
Heat Level: # flames out of 5
Rating: # stars out of 5
Blurb:

After the death of his adoptive mother, Andy Forrest decides to track down his biological family. The search leads him to the struggling central Massachusetts town of Dayfield—and local historian Weston Thibeault, the town’s only other openly gay man. With the help of Weston, Andy uncovers secrets about his birth father, the youngest son of the Chaffees, the family that once owned Dayfield’s largest employer, a furniture factory that closed thirty years earlier.

As Andy and Weston work together, they find a connection to a scandal that rocked the Chaffee family over 125 years ago. But small towns like to bury their secrets, and many of the older residents of Dayfield will do anything to stop Andy and Weston from discovering the truth about the town and its inhabitants.

This book took me awhile to get through. I found the writing very repetitive and mystery slow paced. I also found that some of the characters’ actions made no sense at all.

Andy Forrest is adopted and he goes to the town of Dayfield to find out about his birth parents. He goes to the Historical Society where he meets historian, Weston. This is my first problem. Andy insists that he doesn’t want to meet his parents and that the only reason he’s even looking into his biological family is because his adoptive father convinced him he needed to find out about any genetic medical conditions. I’m not sure why Andy would think that the Historical Society would be a good place to find out about his biological family’s medical history.

Anyway, as Andy starts to dig through his family history, he starts to uncover things that the town’s residents would rather stayed buried. This is when things get hostile…and also repetitive. Whenever Andy or Weston discovered something new they had a recap of everything they’d uncovered before. Soon I was skimming over parts because I was just reading the same facts over and over again.

Weston’s father was another character that I could not make any sense out of his actions. Secrets that he had kept for thirty years are just spilled out over pizza with very little prompting. Things that they probably never would have been able to prove. I don’t understand why he would risk everything just to give Andy closure?

Overall, this was disappointing read.

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