This small town mystery follows Margot as she returns to Wakarusa, Indiana to help care for her uncle who was recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Soon after her arrival, news breaks of the abduction of five-year-old Natalie Clark one town over. The circumstances of which remind Margot of the abduction and murder of January Jacobs twenty years prior. Margot was January's neighbor and despite the tragedy happening so long ago, she's never stopped thinking about January or the fact that her killer was never caught. As Margot begins her investigation, she encounters more blocks than she initially expected and the two cases begin to feel miles apart. However, small town secrets don't stay buried forever.
TW/CW: child abduction, child murder, child death, CSA, suicide, stalking
Ashley Flowers is the host of true crime podcast Crime Junkie. I knew this only because it is mentioned in the book description on NetGalley and Goodreads. You'd think for all the murder books I read (and murder TV shows I watch) that I'd be one of those stereotypical true crime girls. However, I've yet to find a true crime medium that really works for me (the very occasional true crime documentary seems to be the winner). All that to say, I've never listened to Crime Junkie but from the reviews I've been seeing on Goodreads, a lot of folks are pre-ordering or reading ARCs because they really like her storytelling on her podcast. This is Flowers's debut novel and I really enjoyed the writing style and storytelling. I personally can't compare it to the narrative style of the podcast but from what I've seen, if you like the flow of the podcast, then you'll like the writing style of this book.
I loved the dual timeline aspect of this story and I think Flowers did a great job at knowing when to switch between the two. We're following Margot in 2019 and then Krissy (January's mother) in 1994. I really thought the dual timelines were a great way to highlight the odd way small towns can be almost 'stuck' in time where we see a lot of the same characters in both times and we see that they're still having a lot of the same conversations twenty years apart. We also get to see the cycle of how some characters who have plans to get out of this small town, end up stuck despite their plans. In regards to the reveals, Flowers does one of my favorite things - uses the dual timeline switch to reveal even more to the reader. There were multiple times when something was revealed/discovered in one timeline and then we'd immediately switch and either see the direct repercussions or the events in detail (depending on the situation). I really enjoy when authors do this because it really helps my immersion in the story and helps them avoid long chunks of exposition or info-dumping.
The setting was fantastic and I really enjoyed the town being a character. While we do see and speak to some specific people in the town, the overall feeling I got was that 'the town' was this faceless sort of entity. I grew up in a small town (in New England, not middle America) and I really related to the way Flowers uses the pressure of the town to drive her characters. We see Krissy in the opening chapter directly tell the reader that no matter what personal issues she may be having, she'll always be dressed and on-time to church on Sunday because otherwise the town starts talking and then other secrets will get revealed. There's this group-think aspect to how rumors and public opinion changes throughout the story and I thought that concept came across really clearly in the story. I also enjoyed how Margot uses the small town rumor mill to help her investigation but couldn't 100% rely on it.
I did find Margot and Krissy to be interesting characters, but I do wish we got a bit more from the secondary characters. This book read like it was the first in a series where there was some good set up for the side characters but we'll get more in future books (I can't find any evidence that this is the first in a series). While I did like the dual timeline aspect, I think it did take up a good amount of page time which meant that the interactions with the secondary characters were fairly brief. There were also numerous people that Margot wanted to speak to for her investigation and they would open up to her pretty easily after the reader was told that they'd kept private for the past 20 years. I understand why Margot is our protagonist but I do wish we were able to follow Krissy more. Instead, we're following Margot in real-time and then flashing back to Krissy for pretty short periods of time.
The ending (specifically the last page) is the main issue I had with this book. We get a pretty significant cliff-hanger ending that, if I'm being 100% honest, made me furious for about an hour. There is an epilogue to the book, but that epilogue is a flashback to the 1994 timeline so it doesn't resolve the cliff-hanger issue. The final line of the main story does also act a bit like a thesis statement where it really felt like Flowers was stepping through the fourth wall and laying out this bigger idea and it didn't land for me. I didn't have a philosophical issue with the actual idea, but it didn't work for me in the narrative. I think it would have been better suited to an acknowledgement page or an afterward by the author. I generally dislike cliff-hanger endings already, but the way the last few sentences played out on page made me feel almost a little manipulated because I was so invested in the story. It was like the rug got pulled out from under me at the last second, I was completely lifted out of the story, and it Flowers was there giving a lesson. The only upside was that the cliff-hanger does leave the door open for a sequel which I would be interested reading if that happens (but I couldn't find anything about this being the first in a series or that Flowers had a mult-book deal).
Overall, I really enjoyed this small town mystery read and I loved the way the investigation developed. While Margot was a compelling protagonist to follow, I do wish we got a bit more substance out of the secondary characters. I'd be interested to read more from Flowers in the future and I'm holding out hope that this might turn into a series.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Ballantine for the ARC
Expected publication date is August 16, 2022
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