COLD WOODS

When the remains of Lester Haines are found 30 years after his disappearance, his bones won’t be the only things uncovered in a small Pennsylvania town.

Trisha didn’t like her stepfather, Lester, and neither did her friends Carlyn and Dannie. Even as 10-year-olds, the friends felt that Lester was creepy; did Trisha have much more of a reason to think that of Lester? However, after Lester disappeared, the girls grew apart, and Trisha moved to Las Vegas. There, she got involved with a very rich and very abusive man. The only thing bringing her back to this small town is the death of Dannie’s mother, but when Lester’s bones are found and identified, many secrets are about to be unburied, too. The author (River Bodies, 2018, etc.) checks off all the boxes in creating the various characters—loneliness, abuse, self-doubt, rejection—but readers may find themselves skimming as each thought or emotion is analyzed for just a little too long. She also ascribes very adult perceptions to children: Does it make sense to say of a 10-year-old, “But the longer she stared, the more she began to see something else in Trisha, a kind of vulnerability hidden beneath her tough exterior, something she carried deep inside her”? The parallel storyline about the life of the man investigating the mystery adds little spark.

At the end, readers may feel that justice has been served but that their time could have been better spent.