Thriller, family trauma, and paranoia
Plot:
20 years after her father was arrested as a serial killer, psychologist Chloe Davis is trying to move forward and create a life for herself a few miles from where those tragedies happened. Her life seems to be on the upswing - a thriving private practice, a loving fiancé, and a small but stable group of friends. That is until local girls start going missing in an eerily similar way to when she was young. Is she being paranoid by seeing parallels or is she once again finding herself in the way of a serial killer's path?
Review:
After almost throwing this book across the room multiple times out of anxious suspense, all I can say is ‘holy shit.’ Willingham had me captivated from cover to cover trying to piece together clues and create my own theories about the ending.
I don’t read thrillers a lot because more often than not I guess the ending within the first few chapters and it gets boring. This book had enough twists and turns that even though I had my suspicions of who the killer was (a few different people to be honest), I never could completely commit to one theory.
The past and present timelines were woven together so expertly that they often bled into each other in a way that should confuse you as a reader, but doesn’t. It helped me to understand the psyche of the narrator and how she was simultaneously living in the past and present.
Willingham’s writing was so strong that you couldn’t help but feel the emotions of each character and feel involved personally in their stories. They were all so damaged in their own way that gave them a depth that is often missing from thrillers. Their backstories, all traumatic, were not outlandish stories used for dramatization - they were meant to feel like authentic people. People you know. People you could believe in and trust.
Chloe Davis was a complicated heroine. I was inclined to follow her lead and theories so many times because her being a doctor of psychology made her come across as credible. However, her abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs to numb her trauma made her extremely unreliable. The juxtaposition between the professional Doctor Chloe Davis and the unhinged Chloe Davis was part of what made this story so enthralling. It sent her on a wild goose chase we had no option but to follow because since she didn’t know what was real from what was her own paranoia we weren’t able to differentiate between the two either.
The ending was so fast-paced, with so much happening all at once in a perfect synergy. My only wish is that there were one or two more chapters that go into details on the “after” of the story, but that didn’t take away from how incredible the ending was. I could not recommend this more.
Favorite Quotes:
"When people get hurt physically, you can see it in the bruises and the scars, but when they're hurt emotionally, mentally, it runs deeper than that. You can see every sleepless night in the reflection of their eyes; you can see every tear stained into their cheeks, every bout of anger etched into the creases in their forehead."
&
"Because that's the thing about danger - it heightens everything. Your heartbeat, your senses, your touch. It's a desire to feel alive, because it's impossible to feel anything but alive when you find yourself in its presence, the world becoming cloaked in a shadowy haze, its very existence all the proof you need - that you're here, you're breathing."
Rating:
5/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️