An edgy adult thriller from a YA and middle-grade author shines an incisive light on the secrets of a small-town community.
At age 11, Naomi Shaw was left for dead in the woods outside her tiny Pacific Northwest hometown of Chester, stabbed 17 times by her would-be killer. With her friends Olivia and Cassidy—who were also in the woods at the time—she provided the damning evidence that put a dangerous serial killer behind bars. Now, 22 years later, that man has died in prison, resurrecting unwanted memories for the three women. Liv, in particular, is completely overwrought, insisting she has more that she wants to share. At the same time, Ethan Schreiber, an eager and persistent true-crime podcaster, is asking lots of questions, and when Naomi engages with him on several ill-advised levels, the scene is set for an explosive outcome, as decades of secrets begin to emerge. Marshall does a terrific job of maintaining a palpable current of tension throughout the book, and her depictions of the intricately tangled relationships inherent in small-town life are excellent. Elevating this novel beyond the plethora of other thrillers is terrific writing, such as in Marshall’s powerful description of a grieving mother sitting in her child's room after it's been searched by the police, “running her fingertips over the empty space where [the girl’s] things had been, as if beginning to map the shape of her absence.”
Great writing and boldly drawn characters bring a terrifying tale to all-too-vivid life.