Bleak Harbor by Bryan Gruley

Bleak Harbor Book #1

Introduction

Danny is autistic and lives in the town of Bleak Harbor located on the Michigan shoreline of Michigan. He’s excited because the dragonfly festival and his sixteenth birthday will happen in the next week. He focusses his attention on certain topics like dragonflies, perch, the Chicago Cubs, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Danny lives by his routines, but his routines are disrupted when Danny disappears from his home. Who would kidnap him and why?

Summary

Danny has recently moved to Bleak Harbor with his mom Carey Bleak Peters and his stepfather Andrew “Pete” Peters. Bleak Harbor was founded by Danny’s ancestor Joseph Estes Bleak. The heir to the Bleak fortune worth millions of dollars is Serenity Meredith Maas Bleak, Carey’s mother. Carey and her brother Mayor Jonah Bleak have been written out of the will and Serenity wants to donate her money to the town if they will rename the town for her. Carey has been on her own since she had Danny and finished college. She had lived in Chicago with Danny and Pete. She still works in Chicago and commutes back to Bleak Harbor. Pete was a commodities trader in Chicago but lost his job and is now running a medical marijuana shop in Bleak Harbor. Carey and Pete are having marriage trouble and they both have secrets neither knows about the other. They both receive off text messages about their secrets. Danny goes missing and the secrets come out. Other characters that complicate the story include Katya Malone, a police officer assigned to Danny’s missing person case who is mourning the accidental death of her daughter, Randall Pressman, Carey’s boss who Carey has obtained incriminating evidence against, Quartz, Pressman’s fix-it man and a former NSA agent, Allen Locke, an ex-DEA agent who is hot on Pressman’s trail, Michele Higgins, a reporter looking for a big story, and Jeffrey Bledsoe, an ex-con and Danny’s birth father. The sins of the past haunt these characters and when all the secrets are revealed, will Danny survive?

Recommendation

Bleak Harbor is a taut thriller with enough twists and turns to make it a good read. The story starts out straight forward though Danny’s autism makes the beginning interesting. The change happens at the midpoint where a huge reveal changes everything that the reader thought before. That’s where this novel takes off and makes it a novel I can recommend. Book two of the Bleak Harbor series will be called Purgatory Bay and is expected to be released on January 14, 2020.

This is the link to Bleak Harbor’s Goodreads page.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39009406-bleak-harbor