TW/CW: suicide, drug use, drug overdose, child death, animal death, infidelity, domestic abuse
[I'd also like to note that one of the characters in this book is transgender and there is scene where another character is remembering the trans character before they came out as trans and used the trans character's deadname when referring to that character in the past. They never say the deadname aloud, it is all in their internal monologue. The characters have a healthy and accepting relationship in the present day so the deadnaming isn't done with malicious intent but I did just want to mention it because it could be triggering for trans readers. Also, I did read an ARC so there's a chance this might be fixed for the final copy.]
The atmosphere and setting for this book is absolutely the star of the show. The story takes place in Black Harbor, Wisconsin - a fictional place that is described as being Wisconsin's most crime-ridden city. The descriptions we get of the city are centered on the high crime rate, high rate of drug abuse, and run-down infrastructure. It is not a hopeful place, especially not in winter when this story takes place. Hazel's life at home isn't much better - living with her husband in a rundown duplex that she often dreads going home to. The descriptions we get are gritty and despondent and it is mentioned multiple times that Black Harbor is not a place people want to be. Morrissey does a really great job of giving us a good amount of description and world building while not dragging down the pace of the story. This story taking place in Wisconsin, in winter, and with Hazel working the night shift means we see very little sunlight (actual and metaphorical). The setting and atmosphere feel like they're ready made for a limited TV series on HBO. Fans of the Nordic Noir subgenre would feel at home with the atmosphere of this book.
I really enjoyed the character work Morrissey does with Hazel, but found the secondary characters to be a little flat. Hazel is our main character and the story is told in first person POV so we are really settled in her head as the plot unfolds. I found Hazel to be a very well rounded character who felt like a real person - she's flawed in realistic ways and has a pretty in depth history and backstory that is slowly revealed as the plot progresses. I really liked to see the way she would make decisions and rationalize her actions. I did find that sometimes these inner monologues would run a bit long and I would want to get back to the action of the investigation. The cast of secondary characters were pretty well established, but there were a few times where it felt like they would blend together. It might just be a personal reading quirk but if a side character has a name and has more than a two line conversation with the main character, I'm thinking they're going to be important to the plot in some way. There were many characters who did pop up multiple times in important moments but there were also enough ancillary characters who never really came back into the story. This led me to have a general feeling of the cast of side characters to be pretty wide, but not very deep. For example, we meet a good number of the other detectives but she really only interacts, in any meaningful way, with Nik. I was expecting more out of these different characters than I ended up getting and so it made the side characters, as a whole, feel a bit under developed. Again, that might just be a personal issue and I think the characters Hazel does interact with on numerous occasions are pretty well developed and interesting so maybe my expectations were just a little too high.
The pacing and plot balance was where I had my main issues with the book. For the first half, I really thought this was going to be a 5-star read. The pacing and reveals were spot on, I loved how we were getting layers revealed in Hazel's personal life as well as moving forward in the investigation. There were some spot-on reveals and great building of tension that I was excited to see how everything would come together. Then, at about the halfway mark, the pacing really slowed down and lost me. After some reflection and re-reading, I figured out my problem was that after the halfway mark, we leave the drug investigation for a while and focus instead on Hazel and her personal life. Hazel is our main character and we've been following her POV for the whole book so it would make sense that when her personal life starts having issues that we'd be following along as she navigated those issues. However, Hazel had been having trouble in her personal life for the whole first half of the book and we were still able to flip back and forth in both plot lines just fine. But when we leave the investigation on pause, the story goes from being a mystery/suspense to basically a domestic drama/thriller. I think the domestic side was well written, but it was such a large shift from the narrative of the beginning half that it ended up making the book feel really disconnected. When we do, eventually, get back into the investigation thread it, again, felt really disconnected and jarring. On paper, I can see why Hazel had to focus on her personal life, but from a reading experience it made the pacing really slow down and then made the narrative feel not as smoothly connected. I found the first half to be really well balanced between the detective investigation plot and the personal life issues plot and I think if the book was able to keep that balance throughout the whole book, it would have felt much more like a cohesive story.
The mystery and investigation elements were mostly spot on for me but there were a few times I wished certain aspects were really brought more to the forefront. There are two specific plot threads that I really wish were further explored. I could tell by the way they kept getting brought up that they would be important to the overall story (and they were) but I think they could have been much better utilized to also ramp up the emotional tension in the story. Both of these plot threads have some pretty big emotional ramifications for Hazel but there was a bit of a gap, for me, between the buildup of these points and the outcome. I thought having her be a transcriber was an excellent choice and I think it was used well as a lens to explore the detective side of things without having this feel like a typical police procedural - we get the information that the police searched someone's house but we don't need to actually be there with the police searching, for example. I thought the investigation made logical sense and there weren't really any big solutions that came about by accident. I liked how Hazel was an active participant in the investigation and wasn't just being pulled along by Nik. I do think the mystery aspect was lessened by the investigation plot being basically dropped in the middle in favor for the domestic drama side of things to take over. I read this book in 2 sittings over 2 days but when we do get back to the mystery investigation aspect at about the 75% mark, I had almost forgotten about that thread so it took me a while to get back into that mindset. I think the ending felt a bit too convenient for my personal liking and I had to suspend my disbelief a smidge. I do like where Hazel, as a character, ends up at the end and her character growth through the book was really the highlight for me.
Overall, I really liked this book but had some issues in the second half. Great characterization with Hazel, good initial balance of the different sources of conflict in the story, and well built investigation. I do wish the different elements were better blended in the second half, but I'd be excited to read more of Morrissey's work in the future - especially more character driven stories.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is November 30, 2021
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