Passiontide

Death is an all-too-common occurrence for the women of Monique Roffey’s fictional island, St. Colibri, though authorities have so far failed to take the concerns of their female citizens seriously.

But when a visiting steel pan player is found dead under a cannonball tree, her death fans the sparks of discontent into the open flame of active protest.

Passiontide follows the people of Port Isabella as they react to the growing unrest, from a police officer determined to convince those around him that he’s doing his best, to a revolutionary reporter, to a series of characters experiencing personal revelations through the lens of the wider societal issues threatening to overwhelm the society they live in. The characters and locations are fictional, but the events described were inspired by the real-life death of Asami Nagakiya. Monique Roffey did an excellent, thoughtful job of honoring her story while still crafting her own.

The writing was probably my favorite part of the book. There’s a large cast of characters to follow, and some truly heartbreaking moments of emotion that just wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t so attached to them. It was the author’s skill in crafting them, and the world they live in, that had me feeling so deeply for them. The prose was almost lyrical, feeling more like poetry in places – even as what was happening may have been ugly, it was beautifully written, and that kept it bearable where it needed to be.

Full of catharsis and tragedy in turn, Passiontide was a stunning book that took me on an emotional journey. Monique Roffey has managed something very special, and I absolutely loved it.