Kala

Kala by Colin Walsh
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on July 25, 2023
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Small Town & Rural, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 416
Format: eBook
Source: Amazon

A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR NPR, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENT, THE TABLET, AND CRIMEREADS • A gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent in which former friends, estranged for twenty years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives.

"[A] gritty heartbreaker of a thriller…a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans."—Kirkus

“A master class in building suspense…Walsh manages a deft balance between adolescent angst and ecstasy — discoveries bringing horror, sorrow and joy — and the more deliberate, often elegiac reflections of adulthood, reckoning with the promises of the past.”—The Washington Post

In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They—Helen, Joe, and Mush—were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it’s fifteen years later: Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician, newly back in town; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café.

But human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. And as past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance.

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smolder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

My Review

I read this book simply because it was chosen for the book club I participate in with Lauren And The Books. I am going to be honest I struggled with reading this book. Reader, I want to say that if you think you want to pick this book up, then please first check the trigger warnings because there are some pretty awful scenes in it. I will have triggers listed below, but I will not go into depth on them, so if you need specifics, please look them up. Ok, for better or for worse, let me get into this review. Oh, heads up, this review may contain spoilers.

Kala takes place in a small Irish town with two separate timelines in the year 2003 and 2018. We follow six characters, three boys and three girls, all in their mid-teen years. We follow them through the summer of 2003 up until the fall, when their worlds will change forever. Kala, the heart of the group, goes missing one night, never to be seen again until fifteen years later. Her bones show up in the woods near the lake, with a photo of the six of them placed inside her skull. Kala was murdered all those years ago, but no evidence was ever found until now. Who killed her and why? What could they possibly get from killing a fifteen-year-old girl?

After Kala disappeared, the friend group kind of went their own way. Joe Kala’s boyfriend at the time went on to become a famous musician with a drinking problem. Aiden struggles for years after her disappearance and the things going on in his life that he eventually ends his own life. Aoife Kala’s original female friend (before Helen came into town) worked hard to get past what happened, married a man, and now has a child. Helen has moved away to Canada to be a freelance journalist. Mush stays in town and works in his mother’s cafe. Mush suffered terrible things the night that Kala went missing, and he decided not to leave what he knew.

Helen and Joe find themselves back in this small town again all these years later for different reasons. Joe returns to sober up and reconnect with who he is and where he came from. Helen returns because her father is about to marry Mush’s aunt, Aiden’s mother. Nobody is counting on that their return will coincide with Kala’s remains being found. This small town is not at all what it seems. It has dark secrets and ones that the town folk hope have been put to rest and forgotten. It has always been easier to look the other way, but that changes when two teen girls go missing, and those girls happen to be Aiden’s sisters and Mush’s cousins. Does their disappearance have anything to do with Kala? Is it the same person committing the same crimes? This disappearance only fuels Helen and Mush to figure out what happened to Kala that night all those years ago. What they discover could be deadly for both of them.

I struggled with the Irish Slang words they used and found myself using context clues to figure out what was being said at certain points in the story. The use of foul language runs rampant throughout the story, which I was not a fan of in the least. I also did not enjoy the amount of alcohol that the characters consumed throughout the different timelines. I will admit that the alcohol use probably would not bother others, but for me growing up with alcohol addiction in my home, I tend to be more sensitive to such things. I did not enjoy reading about human violence either, but what really sealed the deal for me was the animal cruelty in the book. It was not just in one spot but mentioned multiple times throughout the story. I am sure you can tell Reader that I was not a fan at all of this story and therefore, am not going to recommend reading it. I will say, though, that I did not know who the killer(s) was and found myself shocked in the end. As I have said above, please check the trigger warnings for this book before jumping into the story because this is a heavy-hit book. Until next time, Reader, Happy Reading.

Trigger Warnings:

• Missing Teen Girls
• Foul Language
• Alcoholism
• Mentions of Rape
• Mentions of Incest
• Murder
• Violence Toward Humans
• Animal Cruelty
• Suicide
• Parental Death
• Child Death
• Mental Illness
• Divorce