Book Reviews: Set You Free by Elmer Seward

Happy Monday, everyone! I’m going to start the week with another book review. Unlike many of the books that I’ve been reviewing lately, this one is a bit on the cleaner side; there’s some violence, yes (specifically murders), and some untimely deaths and a brief mention of horrific incidents such as rape and torture, but oddly still cleaner than the romances I’ve read lately. The book I’m reviewing in this post is called Set You Free: Love, Lies, and the Secrets that Bind by Elmer Seward.

It all starts on a stormy night, a freak cold storm on the Eastern Shore in June. As Blake Moore drives home from his nightly visit to his wife’s memorial, he’s given the fright of his life as he nearly hits a young woman and her eight-year-old daughter. Not about to leave them stranded in the pouring rain, Blake reluctantly offers them a ride which the mother, Deena, reluctantly accepts. Little do they know, this small act of kindness won’t be over with just one ride.

What follows is a sweet but tense story of anxiety, mystery, love, and learning to trust and forgive oneself. Everyone has their secrets, their guilt and their regrets However, Deena does not realize that these secrets are never really secrets in small towns, that everyone already knows or will soon find out—and sometimes it’s better that way. Can this poor woman on the run learn to trust her new friends? Will she stay long enough to find out? Most importantly, what is the dark past closing in on and her, and what will happen once it finally catches up to her?

While this story borders on stereotypical for small town mysteries, I found myself surprisingly enchanted by the tale. Having felt trapped in my own hometown—a small town of maybe 3,000 people—I don’t typically enjoy stories of people “finding” their true selves in these sorts of places (except for the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama.) What can I say? They’re cheesy to me, and I find it laughable that people think that these towns are such quaint, peaceful places to live. Somehow, though, Seward manages to make me like this trope, at least for this story.

I’m guessing it’s a combination of the setting and the characters. Unlike many small town stories, which usually take place somewhere rural, this one is along the Eastern coast of the United States. This allowed Seward to play with the stereotypical small town traits, replacing barbecues and rodeos with home-style burger places and seafood festivals. The descriptions, for me, were also more beautiful than in another stories about small towns. I’m personally more captivated by the image of a sunset on the sea than a sunset over the mountains or the prairie, so the scenery in this book much better fit my tastes.

However, I’m almost certain that the characters won me over for this book. From Chum, the bar owner who loves to tell about his shark attack, to Enos, the gentle giant who’s a bit touched in the head, the cast in this book is colorful and varied. Of course, as is often the case in small town stories, a lack of diversity in race, sexuality, and religion showed, but these subjects came up so seldom (if at all) that it didn’t make much of a difference. Still, it would not have killed the story to have more of this sort of diversity. Regardless, the characters are by far my favorite part of this book, particularly Enos and Mama Jo, the kindly old widow who takes in Deena and her daughter as her own family.

While the plot focused on Blake, Deena, and their growth (separately and together), I was actually more taken by the character development in Enos. He remains gentle and not very bright throughout the story, but he grows a spine of sorts and begins to display a sort of emotional intelligence that many with “book smarts” and even common sense don’t have. His growth from just the poor simpleton into a protective guard for Kat—Deena’s daughter—touched me, and I thought his connection with both of them to be one of the sweetest things I’ve read in a while.

Seward makes his book stand out from other similar works by adding an element of mystery and danger to it with Deena’s past. Most of these stories contain some mystery. After all, these people are usually trying to escape pasts they aren’t so proud of. Still, Deena’s past has present-day consequences, some which could turn the entire town upside-down. Seward adds to that the parallel narrative in the journals that Deena and Blake find in the rental house, creating a narrative which both tugged on my heartstrings and compelled me to keep reading just to see how it could all tie together.

As I said before, with a few exceptions, Seward’s work could pass off as your typical small town narrative. Woman ends up in small town, woman reluctantly stays, woman’s past gets mixed with the hometown’s past, and I’ll stop there to avoid any spoilers. Point is, it’s the sort of story I should laugh at. But I’ll be damned if Seward’s writing didn’t make me like it. It just goes to show you, even if you don’t usually like a specific kind of story, you can’t snub them all. You never know when you’ll find the exception to that rule.

Overall, I think that Set You Free by Elmer Seward is a wonderful tale. It’s sweet, homey, but also exciting and mysterious. I absolutely fell in love with Mama Jo and Enos, and my heart went out to Deena and her struggles to rid herself of her troubled past. Seward writes simply and cleanly but with a masterful command of the English language. Surprisingly, I could only find one or two proofreading errors (and I honestly can’t even remember what those were). Only the occasional over-the-top stereotype detracted from the experience (you’ll know what I mean when you meet the character Lisa), so I’m guessing that most of you contemporary fiction readers will love this novel.

You can buy Set You Free by Elmer Seward as an eBook or in print on Amazon.

Do you know of a book I should read? Want your work reviewed on this blog? E-mail me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com or message me on Fiverr and we can arrange something.