The darkness runs deep in this skillfully plotted chiller.
A documentarian gets more than she bargains for when she chooses remote Blackwood Bay as the location of her next film.
Alexandra Young’s harrowing first film, Black Winter, won her accolades, but her second film was a failure, and she needs another hit or her career may be in jeopardy. Alex wants to document what life is like in a small village in the north of England by asking people to send in their own footage, which she would then curate. She secures funding, and the people who hold the purse strings coax her into choosing Blackwood Bay, where she spent a troubled childhood, as her subject. She wouldn't have chosen it herself, but with her career on the line, she agrees. It’s also made clear that she’s to look into the suicide of 15-year-old Daisy Willis,who plunged off a cliff to her death a decade ago. Daisy’s body was never found, but suicide was a foregone conclusion. Then, seven years later, Zoe Pearson, another teen, went missing. After the project is announced to Blackwood Bay citizens, the video clips started pouring in. However, to properly look into the disappearances, Alex must travel to Blackwood Bay. She does have faint memories of the town, but now it’s as if she’s “seeing it through a filter, a distorting prism.” As she gathers footage and probes the residents, it’s clear that some people don’t believe Daisy killed herself and that the incident could be connected to Zoe’s disappearance. Alex doesn’t quite see how the two could be related, but she does sense an insidious rot lingering under the coastal town’s quaint facade. When another teen girl goes missing, the town is looking for someone to blame, and no one is safe, not even Alex. Before she knows it, Alex is no longer a passive observer: She’s part of the story. Watson gradually turns up the heat while carefully teasing out wicked secrets that the town would rather keep buried, and Alex, who has her own secrets, makes an appealing, if possibly unreliable, narrator.
The darkness runs deep in this skillfully plotted chiller.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06238-215-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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