The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis

June 1, 2022

The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis

As children, Hallie and Gus were drawn together by a crime that left Gus orphaned. They live in the small Massachusetts fishing town of Race Point on Cape Cod, both descended from Portuguese immigrants. Hallie's mother Maria died the year before, and Hallie lives with her father Nick, the town doctor. Hallie and Gus remain close through adolescence, and they fall in love and are inseparable, until the night of their senior prom when a terrible tragedy occurs. Gus becomes a priest and a decade later, becomes involved with a woman and her daughter, which results in Gus being charged with murder and landing in jail. Hallie, now married and a doctor, never stopped loving Gus and is determined to clear his name and free him from prison.

I didn't love this one as much as many other readers did. While I was initially drawn into the story, after a couple hundred pages, I was ready for things to move along. It's very long (over 500 pages), and the characters (particularly Gus) make incredibly stupid, almost unbelievably bad choices. I realize that if characters in books made good choices, there would be no story and the book would be 4 pages long, but Gus is almost TSTL (too stupid to live, as my romance reading friends would say). Disappointing.