J.K. Rowling’s new book for adults, "The Casual Vacancy", is a dark, intense story that centers around a small town’s reaction to one man’s sudden death. This book is NOT FOR CHILDREN. The subject material becomes increasingly bleak and grim throughout the story, including such things as drug use, sex, abuse, rape, and death.

After Parish Councillor Barry Fairbrother dies suddenly, a small town is thrust into a local war as a campaign to fill his seat creates factions within the town and some of it’s member’s darkest secrets are revealed.

This story is incredibly written and unspeakably heart-wrenching. There are no secondary characters in this story; everyone has a back-story and a major part to play, from the upper-middle class citizens fighting to remove the blemish that is “The Fields” from their precious town, to the teenagers just trying to survive each day. These characters will become your friends and neighbors and enemies as you delve into the small town with dark roots beneath it’s pretty face.

"The Casual Vacancy" will tug at your heart strings and leave you feeling shocked and dismayed, but also refreshed and better for having read it. Rowling’s writing style is brilliant as always, and her passion for each character and their particular story really comes through. This book is incredible, despite it’s heavy subject matter. It’s a unique story written in a way that only J.K. Rowling could accomplish.

Excerpt:

“Disgust rose in Samantha like vomit. She wanted to seize the over-warm cluttered room and mash it between her hands, until the royal china, and the gas fire, and the gilt-framed pictures of Miles broke into jagged pieces; then, with wizened and painted Maureen trapped and squalling inside the wreckage, she wanted to heave it, like a celestial shot-putter, away into the sunset. The crushed lounge and doomed crone inside it, soared in her imagination through the heavens, plunging into the limitless ocean, leaving Samantha alone in the endless stillness of the universe.”