This mystery starts with the murder-suicide of a young couple in a public park in London. There are five bystanders who witness the tragedy and some even try to intervene. With that many witnesses, you'd think that it was a pretty clear case of what happened. However, our main character Jen is a journalist and not long after the killing, she's messaged by a mysterious Twitter account who tells her that not everything about that day is as it seems. This leads Jen down the rabbit hole of an investigation where everyone has something to hide and the truth might be closer than Jen would like to admit.
TW/CW: animal death, suicide, infidelity, alcohol abuse, domestic abuse
The part I liked the most was the characters and character relationships. The book alternates POV between Jen and her best friend Bex. The two have been friends since meeting in college and have been there for each other through some pretty rough times. While most of the story takes place in present day, we do get some flashbacks to significant moments in Jen's life and how Bex was there for her. We know Jen has had a rough time lately with her 5 year relationship ending at the same time as losing her column in the paper, but she has been slowly getting back into a routine with the help of Bex and another journalist named Penelope, who Jen lives with and has an interesting somewhat mentor/mentee relationship. We get hints that Jen had some sort of breakdown previously and is in a somewhat delicate mental state so her relationships are really highlighted because she isn't doing much on her own these days. I really enjoyed how complex of a character Jen was, especially once we learn more about her back story. Jen is a somewhat unreliable narrator as we learn when we get multiple accounts of the same event. However, I didn't feel Jen was unreliable when it came to the present day investigation so it really seemed like she was still working through some traumatic events in her past but current-day she has been doing better. Jen isn't the typical investigative journalist protagonist, which I really liked. She's a bit of a mess and while she can pull it together for a little while, we see a lot of times how a small event can trigger a massive panic spiral. Penelope is the calculating investigative journalist character, which often put her at odds with Jen due to their differing views and philosophies.
The POV switching was interesting because it would often happen while we were in the middle of a scene with only Jen and Bex. It was an interesting way to get both sides of the current scene, but I often found myself forgetting which POV we were in. I didn't feel like the character voices were distinct enough for me to tell them apart unless they directly addressed the other character or if there were other details in the narrative that made it obvious. Also, due to the POV switching, there are multiple times where the reader finds out information before Jen does which I felt really lessened the impact of the reveal once Jen does find out. There are times where I have liked finding out information before the main character, but only when that information is so vague that it isn't immediately clear what is happening - when there's an un-named POV that might not be in the same time period as the main story, for example. In this case, it felt like so many of the puzzle pieces were laid out for the reader that I could see the whole picture even if a piece was missing here or there. There were times where it felt like Jen and Bex were fighting on page for who would be the main character. I felt that Jen was 100% the main character so I wanted less of Bex's POV and more focus on Jen.
The actual plot and investigation thread felt very unnatural because it felt like Jen basically had to have her hand held through the entire book. Between Bex, Penelope, and the mystery Twitter account messaging her, it really felt like Jen had very little autonomy. Before reading, I thought the mystery of this book was going to hinge on the different witnesses seeing different versions of the same events and Jen then investigates to see which version is correct. That is not what happened in this book. The actual physical events are never really thrown into question other than by the Twitter account who only makes a vague statement about the killings first and then turns into a sort of stalker account. Also, the article Jen is researching and writing during the book didn't seem like her idea either but she sort of grabbed onto the idea since she's been having money troubles lately. Now, I've never been a witness to a murder-suicide but it felt like Jen was unnaturally obsessed with the events to the point where she would almost get manic over trying to find out what the truth was that the Twitter account mentioned. As a note, I do think some of this feeling was done on purpose to show how vulnerable Jen is given her past history and current emotional state but I just don't think it was overall very effective.
I did like the overall ending reveal and how that was handled. However, I did think that Jen doing a full 180 didn't feel authentic to her character. She spent 75% of the book convinced the answer was X and becoming obsessed with X then, at the end, she gets a couple of clues that the answer is really Y and then she's completely fine with leaving X in the dust. I think the little clues that she gets about Y weren't enough to so suddenly dispel her obsession with X and it, again, felt like Jen was just being manipulated by the people around her. So while I don't quite buy the way that the ending twist was revealed, I did really enjoy the actual twist. I think the fact that the reader gets so much information throughout the book really made the twist that much more surprising because it wasn't something that the reader knew ahead of time (but the clues were there if you pay close enough attention).
Overall, this book has an interesting premise, but the execution left me wanting more. I did like Jen and her relationships with Bex and Penelope, but most of the actual investigation and plot felt really heavy handed and took away from Jen's agency. I didn't enjoy how much information was revealed ahead of time by the POV switching and I wanted more of a slow realization of the truth at the end.
Thanks to NetGalley and Scarlet for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is October 5, 2021.
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