This small town mystery follows Baby in the days following her mother's death. Baby has spent the past few years living and working at Oakwood Hills - a crumbling lakeside resort. Now Baby's life is turned upside down with her mother gone, a notorious drug dealer back in town, and the owner of Oakwood leaving. Oakwood Hills is being sold to Amelia, the twin sister to Baby's casual hookup/boyfriend. Baby is desperate to stop Amelia from implementing the changes to Oakwood and between attempts to sabotage Amelia, Baby also plans to look for a safe rumored to be filled with casino chips from the bottom of the lake. However, when the drug kingpin finds Baby sneaking around, he wants in on the money and he isn't taking no for an answer.
TW/CW: death of a parent, alcoholism, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, drug overdose, domestic violence, suicide, financial struggles
The pacing was a bit of a slow burn, which I wasn't expecting. From the description, I thought this would be a sort of treasure-hunt story where Baby and her friends would be out looking for this safe and uncover town secrets in the process. However, the very existence of the safe doesn't come up until a bit past the 25% mark and then it plays a much smaller role in the story than I was expecting. The first 1/2 of this really read more like a general fiction book where Baby is struggling with the sudden changes in her environment and personal life. The mystery and tension to pick up in the second 1/2 of the book (really mostly in the last 1/3) and I think a lot of the plot points and reveals we get in those later moments have so much more emotional weight because of this longer set-up period.
I really think Baby is going to be the make or break aspect of this book for readers (for the record, I absolutely loved her). She's stubborn, a bit spoiled, and her life is pretty messy all around. She certainly fits the unlikable narrator criteria and there were times when I wanted to reach into the book, grab her by the shoulders, and just shake some sense into her. Thankfully, she does have some character development and growth during the story that felt very believable. When we meet Baby at the beginning of the story, she isn't in a great place with her mother recently dying, but then she's dealt blow after blow and we eventually get to the low point of the story with Baby literally in the dirt by the side of the road. Seeing Baby at this low point after following her and seeing all the decisions that led up to this point was really more of an emotional weight than I normally expect with my mysteries.
The whole cast of characters was really well developed and I loved seeing them interact with each other. They had a fantastic group dynamic as well as very well-defined individual personalities. Of course, we get a lot of time with Baby and her friends but also we see a good number of the other townspeople interacting as well. I loved the town as a character on its own and how well the history was integrated into the story. As a side note - I do wish there was a map included (maybe there will be on in the finished copy) because I did have a hard time picturing the layout with Baby going to all these different locations. I really like books set in these sort of seasonal tourist towns where there's often a very clear divide between the locals and the (usually) rich visitors. In this case, I thought Baby's relationship with one of these out of town people was a really interesting way to play with this tension and natural divide.
The plotting of the mystery was interesting, but really felt like it was secondary to the plot following Baby's attempts to get Oakwood Hills away from Amelia. Of course, the two plots do intersect at certain points in the story but overall this read to me more like a general fiction book with a solid mystery subplot. I do think because of this, the pieces fell together pretty quickly in the end and the mystery investigation didn't have a whole lot of twists in that plot string. However, I did like where we ended up overall and I think Hambrock does a great job of weaving in smaller details that didn't seem important at the time but end up being important in the overall scheme of the mystery. While we do get the conclusion to the mystery in the end, there were some other details that were left a bit too open ended for my liking and almost felt like the door was being left open a crack for a potential sequel. I would love to keep following Baby and her friends but I do get irked with endings that are left a little open like this.
Overall, I really enjoyed this read. I loved Baby's character and development over the course of the story. And although the mystery came in much later than I was expecting, I did find it satisfying in the end. I do wish the mystery played a bigger role in the overall story and that we got a bit more closure at the end, but those are more personal preferences I have.
Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC.
Publication date is September 6, 2022
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