American By Day - Review

American By Day   🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

by Derek B. Miller

Published April 3 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  

Oh, Derek B. Miller, it's good to know you've still got it, that incredible ability to take serious, tough topics like suicide, cancer, depression,  grief and loneliness, politics and prejudice, and put  them into a story that is deep, yes, but lots of fun too.  Loved it!

I adored Norwegian By Night, so this sequel had a lot of expectations to live up to; and it managed to make me feel happy, sad, and even a little more intelligent because Miller's writing covers some heavy topics that make you really think.  These are all the same feelings I had with NBN, so this book met and surpassed my expectations.

We get to know Sigrid Odegard much better here, and the New York sheriff Irving Wylie who is trying to help her find her brother is a wonderful character.  Miller creates lonely, quirky souls who worm their way into your very heart.  

In this town in upstate New York, an African American boy named Jeffrey was shot by a policeman who believed Jeffrey's toy gun was real.  The cop was exonerated.  His Aunt Lydia is dating Sigrid's  brother Marcus, and Lydia is soon found dead outside a construction site, having fallen 6 floors.  Whether she was pushed by Marcus, now missing, and if there was any connection between the two deaths is what Sheriff Wylie wants to know; and Sigrid intends to find her brother before the authorities do.  She is much more wiley than Sheriff Wylie, but quite a pair they do make.  The ending might make you cry.

An ebook from NetGalley and the publisher.