Shelter in Garnet Run

Shelter in Garnet Run (2023) Roan Parrish (Garnet Run)

We met River Mills in Best Laid Plans as one of the teens who hangs out in Rye’s derelict house, and again in Adam’s younger sibling in The Lights on Knockbridge Lane.

Cassidy is an ethical taxidermist, often working with animals who were hit by cars. Which is how he ends up meeting River–he stopped for what he thought was road kill but ended up being a freezing cat.

This story is full of the characters from all the Garnet Run books.

Which means that although it is a complete story on its own, the appeal is seeing Rye and the Matheson brothers and Simon and Wes.

And Gus.

I liked Cassidy, but I never really got a grip on who he was. He felt like a bunch of characteristics that were poured into the story but never allowed to fully gel. Cassidy has ADHD, Cassidy suffers from migraines, Cassidy is a taxidermist, Cassidy has a sister. None of those details ever settled into an interesting person.

There were also quite a few editing issues.

“Grandma Jean …”

Simon’s grandmother looked up from the bag of cookies she was offering Cassidy.

“Please let her keep giving me cookies,” Cassidy requested.

“Grandma Jean, keep giving Simon cookies.”

“I will,” she said, making it clear that she would have anyway.

Which is too bad because there were lots of details that should have made it a good story.

River was swamped with the cocktail of feelings they often experienced when hanging out with Gus: intense relief that she was herself easily and without compromise and a guilty kind of envy that they were not.

“I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t have any big dream of a career. I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to order people around. I just want to live and make my own decisions and be happy. God, that sounds so cheesy,” they groaned.

“Consider the radical notion that this date is about you. To see how you feel about him. It’s up to him to impress you, not the other way around. That means you should be yourself. You should ask him whatever you want to know. And you should worry about forming an opinion about him, not about if you’re making him like you.”

The whole thing felt like a cake that was rushed–never fully mixed, and pulled out of the oven before it was baked through.

Publisher: Monster Press

Rating: 6/10

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