Review: Close Your Eyes by Amanda Eyre Ward

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Random House (July 26, 2011)
• ISBN-10: 0345494482
• Source: Publisher

Lauren Mahdian, (age six) and her brother, Alex (age nine) awake from a night spent in their treehouse to learn their mother is dead, their father arrested for her murder.

Decades later, Lauren is now a real estate broker and Alex is a doctor. Lauren refuses to speak to or visit her father in jail, while Alex pursues his own investigation of the crime, unwilling to accept their father is guilty. They are orphans, in a sense, raised by their grandparents.  Their grandfather passed away several years ago, their grandmother is now in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s.

When Alex tells Lauren he is headed to Iraq to participate in a Doctors Without Borders program, Lauren is heartbroken.  Alex is persistent and heads off to Iraq, leaving Lauren on her own.  Before he leaves, he attempts to talk to her about his investigation, the leads he’s uncovered, but Lauren refuses to listen.

When Alex goes missing after an explosion at hospital at which he was working, Lauren is inconsolable. In an instant, the only immediate family she knew is now gone.  She uncovers a file Alex was keeping on the investigation and begins to follow her brother’s tracks, the most valuable piece of evidence being an earring found at their home the night of the murder.

Sylvia is a 43-year-old woman, pregnant with the child her husband doesn’t want.  She decides to leave him and head to New York, the home of her “wild child” friend from her youth, Victoria.  The person she discovers is not the friend she remembers, but a woman who drowns memories of a horrid night by drinking, leaving her young daughters in the care of her mother, Mae.

Mae and Victoria share a horrible secret, one that involves Sylvia and, unknowingly, the lives of Lauren and Alex as well.  They are all forced to come to terms with the horrible incident of one evening and how it will forever change their future.

Close Your Eyes is quite a unique story of family, love, honesty and ultimately, forgiveness.  There was a bit going on with this story, in a sense too much, in my mind.  There were so many characters, each with quite involved storylines if their own.  I wish more time was spent developing each of the characters rather than just trying to solve the mystery that connected them all.  

Lauren does go through a tremendous change in the novel.  Used to having her brother Alex to support her, she puts on a brave face and overcomes a reluctance to learn the truth behind her mother’s death. I don’t believe she would have taken this step had Alex been around to support her.

It is Sylvia’s character that I wish was more developed.  At times, it seems her character, and the characters of Victoria and her mother, Mae, were just thrown in to add additional drama to the story.  I wanted to know more about her, perhaps allowing me to feel more sympathy for her than I did.

At just over 250 pages, I think adding a bit more details about many of the characters would add to the overall experience.  I was left feeling sympathy for each of the individuals involved, but only at the surface.  That said, not all mysteries must have strong characters, authors often have a difficult decision in chosing between deep, strongly developed characters and a robust storyline.

 Ward does an outstanding job of portraying this decades-long mystery.  The prose was eloquent, instantly capturing my attention.  My emotional reaction to the writing perhaps outweighs my opinions of the character development.  Ward took me completely off guard with the storyline; never would I have connected the characters.

Close Your Eyes is an engrossing read that may at surface level seem dreary or depressing.  Ultimately, however, it is a story of hope, of persistence, and of trust.  Despite my issues with the book, I would still recommend it.

Thank you to TLC book tours for providing me with the opportunity to participate in this tour.  Please check out the other stops in this tour:

Monday, July 11th:  Bewitched Bookworms
Wednesday, July 13th:  Starting Fresh
Monday, July 18th:  A Bookworm’s World
Saturday, July 23rd:  Take Me Away
Tuesday, July 26th:  Bella’s Novella
Wednesday, July 27th:  Colloquium
Thursday, July 28th:  In the Next Room
Friday, July 29th:  Luxury Reading
Monday, August 1st:  Nomad Reader
Wednesday, August 3rd:  Life in the Thumb
Thursday, August 4th:  Rundpinne
Wednesday, August 10th:  Crazy for Books

Connect with the author on her website, www.amandaward.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter