Audiobook Review: The River Muse by Laura Resau

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Main Characters:

• Calliope "Callie" — MFC, singer who gave up her music; recently widowed, fleeing her late husband's friend turned controlling partner

• Eva — Callie's precocious eight-year-old daughter, who talks to her late father's ghost and to the ghost boy at the chateau

• Nick — Callie's late husband, who died in a freak accident (appears as a ghost Eva speaks with)

• Brett — Nick's friend who stepped in after his death, drugged and controlled Callie, and later tracks her down

• Madame Lavigne — the "witchy" / "wine witch" landlady of the Chateau of the Lost

  
  

Magical realism with raw emotional honesty at its core. Content note: emotional abuse, coercive control, drugging by a partner.

Calliope and her daughter Eva escape at the very beginning of the book, and yet I found my heart beating faster each time the story flipped to the weeks leading up to their escape. The way Resau tells the story with a chapter in the present followed by a chapter leading up to Calliope's choice to leave keeps the fear of Brett in the forefront without being repetitive. Brett's coercive control is hard to listen to in the best way. Resau shows how giving up little pieces of yourself to make things easier adds up, and suddenly you don't recognize yourself anymore. Each surrender cuts off a part of you. When people love you, they should make you more of yourself, not less.

There are fairytale themes throughout the book without it being saccharine. Callie and Eva land at the Chateau of the Lost in a small village in the South of France, renting a cottage from a witchy landlady and surrounded by an acclaimed truffle hunter, his son Luc, a pack of dogs, and a ghost. The found family Resau builds here is the heart of the book. Callie slowly reclaims her music — the magic she gave up to keep Brett happy — and her voice starts inspiring hearts in the village.

I rooted for Callie and Eva the whole way and listened to this in one sitting. Cassandra Campbell narrates and she's the right choice — there's a lyrical, almost musical quality to her voice that suits a story this steeped in song. She handles Callie's fear, the French village cast, and the dreamier passages of the chateau without ever tipping into performance.

This is Resau's second adult novel after The Alchemy of Flowers, and it pulls magical realism, suspense, a touch of romance, found family, and cozy small-town charm into one book that really works.