This was another book that husband flew through recently while helping my tackle a backlog in books! His words- this was a beautiful piece of work that made the characters just come to life.
Thank you for this arc in exchange for an honest review,

So many excellent reviews for this book but I just could not get into it at all. It's not that it's awful but it's hard to care about bad guys killing other bad guys

2 stars

This book earned its fourth star in the last quarter. The rest of the book was well written but I only really started to engage with the characters when the various threads of the story came together. Loo is a young girl who has spent her life travelling from town to town with her father, the eponymous Samuel Hawley. Finally they settle in the town where Loo's grandmother still lives. The story of what brought Samuel to this point is told in flashbacks which alternate with the story of what is happening in the present day, focusing on Loo and her development from child to woman. But when your past is as full as Samuel Hawley's, it is bound to catch up with you eventually. I enjoyed this book but up until the final chapters it did not grip me. The ending though was worth the wait and I am glad I read it.

Interesting debut novel, about the man bringing up his daughter whilst almost on the run all the time. Samuel is a scarred man, each bullett telling a story about his life before/after his daughter Loo is born and her mother is lost. Once they decide to settle in one place, Loo is able to have all the things she has been denied - friends, an education, and most importantly, love. A promising, well written debut.

The twelve lives of the title are represented by the twelve bullet wounds in Samuel Hawley’s body. Samuel Hawley lives on the edge of society, in many ways an outlaw. Some of those bullet wounds were deserved. But is he a bad man? That’s the question at the heart of this compelling, moving and beautifully written novel about a heart-broken man and his love for his daughter, his attempt to give her all he can, and her love for him. Their relationship is one of the most touching I have ever read about. I loved this book from start to finish. It’s wise and compassionate and full of insight into human emotions and conflicts. Well-paced, well-constructed and quite unforgettable.

This book is bittersweet and heartbreaking, exploring the relationship between a father and daughter. It's also a thriller that contains a raft of twists and exhilarating scenes.

I really enjoyed this and loved the writing.

This book is one of those stories that stays with you for a while after you've finished it. Hawley and Loo's story is both dark and sweet, and their struggles and victories are told with both stark seriousness and wry humour.

I loved the way the novel unfolds, with father Samuel Hawley and daughter Loo presented in the present day interspersed with chapters that flashback to key moments in Hawley's past. We see how private and restrained Hawley came to be and why his and Loo's relationship is what it is. I thought Loo was portrayed brilliantly and realistically as an outcast teen, trying to fit in and behave normally, but unable to reconcile that with the unusual way she was raised.

Loo and Hawley both feel deeply though they express little, but throughout the novel we always remain certain of their love and dedication to keeping each other safe and happy. This is a coming of age story for both Hawley and Loo, as they both learn to deal with Hawley's past and the circumstances around the death of Loo's mother.

THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY in an incredibly touching read that I was 100% sucked into as soon as I started the first chapter. If you're a fan of THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt or A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara then I would highly recommend this book to you (though it is much shorter than either of those goliaths!). This was a beautiful story and stunningly told, and I can definitely see myself re-reading it soon!

I was sent The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti to read and review by NetGalley.
I really enjoyed this book, it had a very curious feeling of being timeless. The basis of the story is the relationship between teenager Loo and her father Samuel Hawley and it moves effortlessly between the past and the present day. The quality of the writing had me totally immersed in both the location and the lives of the characters, always nudging me on to read just another chapter and then another! Hannah Tinti has made her characters utterly believable and her writing is so beautifully descriptive, without being flowery, that you feel that you are part of the book and the journey that unfolds within it. Highly recommended!

It took me a while to get into the book and i did think some of the "wounding" chapters became a bit repetitive, but the characters were strong and likeable even if not morally good. The side characters and the setting added quite a bit to the storyline and in some ways a sense of quirkiness. Overall i enjoyed the read although it is probably not my favourite genre

I found that this was a well written book about a father and daughter. I found the book well written and believable and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a roller coaster of a story and a very good read.

The story: Loo has spent her life travelling the country with her father, never staying in one place for too long and always ready to pack up and go at a moment’s notice. Samuel Hawley, her father, has a dangerous past – one that’s written across his body in scars. When they attempt to settle down in the hometown of Loo’s mother, resistance from the local community causes problems for them both. As Loo grows up and struggles to fit in and become her own person, she also has to reconcile her idealistic childhood views of her father with the man that he used to be, and the man that he’s become.

My views: I really enjoyed this book. The format – which is made up of stories of Samuel’s past and how he came to get each of his twelve bullet scars, interspersed with the story of Loo’s present as she attempts to deal with bullying, boys and an absent mother – worked really well and kept me gripped.

Samuel is unapologetic about his past. He knows that he’s made some bad decisions and chosen a dubious path on numerous occasions, with repercussions that have affected not just himself but also his daughter. He may not have been the model father, but he’s fiercely protective of Loo, and has turned his life around to raise her as best he can. As she grows up and starts to question him, he’s forced to deal with the fact that she’s no longer a child but a young woman capable of making her own decisions and her own mistakes.

Loo in turn is tough and stubborn. She lashes out when provoked and struggles to keep her emotions in check. But behind this outward persona she’s clearly vulnerable and dealing with a whole range of emotions. She’s been raised entirely by her father, who keeps a shrine to her mother in the bathroom wherever they go. She wants to find out who her mother really was and how and why she disappeared from her life, but that’s a story that only Samuel can tell.

For the most part, the structure of the book worked well, although I felt like there were a few pacing issues in the middle. There’s also a lot of violence, anger and crime. Samuel is a somewhat shady character and in some lights Loo could be seen as a challenging teenage troublemaker. Despite that though, I really connected with both of them. The author has created two really well rounded characters and never judges them for their choices. Instead we get a real insight into who they are and the challenges they face.

I loved this book and the characters, flaws and all. It was hard and tender and I didn't want it to end.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Part coming of age, part bloody redemption this book is an interesting look at the relationship between parent and child and the desire of even those who have taken many wrong turns to still 'do right' by their child.

Hannah Tinti’s thriller-cum-family-drama is a pacy, modern homage to the 12 labours of Hercules rewritten around the twelve bullet wounds on Samuel Hawley’s body. Hawley is a reticent, gun-toting, widower roaming the USA with his young daughter. As Loo becomes a teenager they finally find some measure of stability, returning to the aptly-named Olympus, hometown of her mother’s youth, but it is far from plain-sailing.

Hawley’s past is shady and blood-stained and Loo knows only that her mother drowned when she was still an infant. The only evidence that remains of her place in their lives is the strange collection of ephemera (receipts, snapshots, old toiletries) from which Hawley creates a strange, poignant shrine in each of their temporary homes. Their nomadic life has has not been the most bred a streak of anger teenaged Loo (taught to shoot aged twelve) which sometimes explodes into violence when she is targeted by bullies. The story may be the twelve lives of Samuel Hawley but it also a coming-of-age drama about growing up on the periphery with a life and a code of conduct that doesn’t always conform to the expectations of others.

Interspersed with the events of their current life in small-town America are the stories of Hawley’s twelve scars. His precise role remains unclear but he is caught in a cycle of theft and violence that he struggles to escape, even after he has a family of his own. He’s an enigmatic, thoughtful character with no real taste for violence despite the violent acts he commits. His love for Loo is a strong current in the book, even when his methods are questionable and sometimes stray into cliched “over-protective father” territory. The mysteries that surround his past are intriguing and the bursts of action and keep the pages turning nicely, even if I would have liked to get into his headspace a little more than Tinti allows, particularly in the flash-back sections where Loo is not our main viewpoint.

It’s an engaging, cinematic tale (I’d be very surprised if the film rights don’t get snapped up) about a small, imperfect family surviving on the margins of society. It reveals violence as a complex thing, sometimes chosen, sometimes inescapable but not always definitive. There’s a tough sort of heart at its root and a deep, prickly love between a father and daughter.

Started with good intentions, great plot ideas and characters who appealed but soon found that the sequence of events were not intriguing me enough to hold my attention

This book is so good! The 12 lives of the title refer to the 12 bullets that have hit Samuel Hawley through his life and the narrative interweaves the story of each of these bullets with chapters that tell about his life in a small fishing town with his daughter, Loo. Both of our main characters are beautifully drawn by Hannah Tinti. She has a wonderful eye for detail and slips in little facts that instantly give us a sense of each person, while allowing their true nature to evolve and emerge through the course of the novel. The prose is gorgeous and the pacing is pitch perfect. The book was good for the first three quarters and then it seemed to kick up a notch somehow, becoming utterly compelling with no loss of quality. It is a marvellous achievement and I really recommend it to anyone who enjoys good character novels.

Samuel Hawley grew up quickly moving from being a petty criminal to part of team known for their quick efficient work. However after a job goes wrong Samuel lies low and then meets Lily. She is a free spirit and they fall in love, get married and have a baby, Loo, but then Samuel's past catches up with them. Samuel and his daughter spend their lives moving from place to place until they pitch up in Olympus, Massachusetts - Lily's home town and where her mother still lives. For the next few years they try to make a life for themselves until Samuel's past comes calling again.

I loved this book on so many levels. As a description of the relationship between a father and a daughter it is written very tenderly and with that understanding of a bond that goes beyond forgiveness. The way the narrative switched between Loo's present life and Samuel's past was great and I particularly liked the use of the history of Samuel's bullet scars as a way of telling his story. Although there is a lot of violence in the book, it does not feel gratuitous or unnecessary, it feels that it is essential to understand the two sides of Samuel's character - his love for his long-dead wife and his living daughter, and the hard life he has had and the need to survive. There is also a really poetic set of motifs passing through, the beauty of whales and the vastness of the cosmos. All in all a stunning, sensitive and beautiful book.

Samuel Hawley is a drifter, a criminal and has the habit of getting shot. A lot. This would be complicated enough without addition of his daughter Loo. They've spent years, moving from town to town, only ever really having each other until he decides it's time to settle down in the coastal town where his late wife had grown up, where he begins work as a fisherman. Here Loo, now a teenager struggles to fit in, and begins to wonder what really happened when her mother died. Interspersed with her coming of age tale we learn Hawleys story via the tale linked with each of his scars, twelve bullet wounds that have gradually pushed them both to where they are.

When you boil this book right down to it's bare bones it's a story about love. And how people that do the most awful things can be capable of love and been loved. Hawley is pretty bad person in many ways - he does bad things but he has an innate sense of fairness and strangely (considering his previous profession) justice. But his only reason now for existing is Loo, and all he really cares about is protecting her and making sure she can protect herself. The relationship between them is bittersweet, it's both a joy to read and sometimes quite painful. I read this in just over a day, not unusual for me but I felt as if I should have taken my time more, it was over too soon. It's beautifully written, one of those great American novels that you know will last the test of time. It's epic without been unnecessarily long, a delight to read and one that I know I'll read again in the future, many times.


Many thanks to Netgalley, publishers and author for this copy for an honest review.

img_2364Samuel Hawley did not have the best start in life and by the time he’s a teenager he is involved in petty crime to keep body and soul together. Then he moves onto bigger jobs with higher stakes but much bigger pay-offs. But when he meets Lily he knows everything has to change.

Years later he moves back to Lily’s hometown with their teenage daughter Loo. It’s time to stop running, he becomes a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school. Meeting her grandmother makes her curious about her mother’s mysterious death and the twelve bullet scars Hawley carries on his body.

Soon Hawley’s past and Loo’s investigations collide. Can they survive?

Okay, first things first, on the official blurb for this book it says that it’s perfect for fans of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. It’s really not. Not that fans of that book can’t like this one (I enjoyed both) but they are nothing whatsoever alike so liking one will not predispose you to like the other.

This is an interesting work, it’s a combination of a literary thriller and a coming of age novel. There’s plenty of action and more than 12 bullets but it also explores what makes a family, living with grief, the value of a human life, first love, community tensions, ecological issues and the sacrifices and manipulations we commit to protect the people we love most. Most of all it’s a story about a father-daughter relationship and how when we do something for love rather than for money we become heroes.

Quite a lot packed into a regular sized novel! And overall it works, most of the characters are convincing and easy to feel at least a little sympathy for. The settings are easy to visualise and the language paints windows for the reader to see into their lives. The story is well constructed, in fact this is where Tinti’s talent excels. She uses the scars on Hawleys body to draw us back into different parts of his past, to show us what made him the man he is and even though I didn’t feel like I had any idea what the point of it was for the first half of it I was happy to trust the author that it wasn’t just going to be ‘killing time’ book. As you can see from the paragraph above I wasn’t disappointed!

My only criticism of it was that there were a few moments when it dragged a bit. But literally only 2 or 3 and it soon picked up again each time. Reading this is like eating steak, there’s a little gristle but there’s also sweetness and nourishment if you persevere. If you like gritty American dramas or books with complicated characters this book is for you.

Four Bites

This is a very good story about a career criminal and his daughter. The chapters alternate between the present day life of Hawley and daughter Loo, and explanations of how the father managed to get shot and survive numerous times. Wonderful characters and a very moving and bittersweet story.