Review: Shotgun Lovesongs, Nickolas Butler

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book on Netgalley from the publisher in return for an honest review*

Hank, Leland, Kip and Ronny were all born and raised in the same Wisconsin town — Little Wing — and are now coming into their own (or not) as husbands and fathers. One of them never left, still farming the family's land that's been tilled for generations. Others did leave, went farther afield to make good, with varying degrees of success; as a rock star, commodities trader, rodeo stud. And seamlessly woven into their patchwork is Beth, whose presence among them—both then and now—fuels the kind of passion one comes to expect of love songs and rivalries.
Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world. The result is a shared memory only half-recreated, riddled with culture clashes between people who desperately wish to see themselves as the unified tribe they remember, but are confronted with how things have, in fact, changed.

Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. His work has appeared in: Ploughshares, The Christian Science Monitor, The Kenyon Review Online, Narrative, The Progressive, and many other publications.
Along the way he has worked as: a meatpacker, a Burger King maintenance man, a liquor store clerk, a coffee roaster, an office manager, an author escort, an inn-keeper (twice), and several other odd vocations.
He presently lives on 16 acres of land in rural Wisconsin adjacent to a buffalo farm. He is married with and has two children.

I saw this book over at River City Reading where Shannon wrote a lot of good things about this book. I fell for the cover in one go. The atmosphere was just jumping from it. Reading the synopsis got me even more enthusiastic for this book so I was really happy to get approved to review it.
It was not easy to put this book down. The book is told from multiple points of view but I could not care less though this is usually one of my pet peeves. The writing is very engaging and though the different voices were clear the story flow never felt interrupted. There are a lot of things happening in the book, things that happen in a group of friends, secrets being revealed due to circumstances. Still the book does not really have a big bang which made it even more real for me.
Though the characters are all very different I did not really have a problem connecting to all. If I have to choose one who I had a bigger problem with it was Kip but I did feel we missed out on a lot of information on him for most of the book. Which is the only thing that disturbed me a bit. Some of the information comes to the story late explaining decisions or reactions that happened earlier that made me very angry while reading them. I felt some of the characters did not really get a fair chance to prove themselves before the end of the book.

Shotgun Lovesongs
Author: Nickolas Butler
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Pages: 320
Format: eGalley
ISBN-10: 1250039819
ISBN-13: 9781250039811
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