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Secrets, secrets are no fun.<\/p>\n
Naomi, Olivia, and Cassie were 11 years old when they were brutally attacked in the woods by a well-known and hunted serial killer who was also wanted for the deaths of countless other women.\u00a0 The woods: once their safe-haven, once their backdrop to live out their fantasy game of spirits, potions, dungeons, and goddesses.\u00a0 The woods: the place where their lives would change forever.\u00a0 The woods: the link that would always connect them to each other.\u00a0 The woods: the keeper of so many secrets and lies.\u00a0 They have tried to move on, each in their own way.\u00a0 When the girls, now adults, received phone calls from the authorities that their attacker had died in prison, the news should have brought them a sense of peace and closure.\u00a0 Instead, it caused them to revisit the past, both physically and figuratively, and caused them to question the stories they had told detectives, lawyers, juries, and themselves. When Olivia contacts Cassie and Naomi and tells them she must come clean about one of their deepest and darkest secrets, the girls can\u2019t help but think their actual reality and perceived reality is about to be turned upside down.\u00a0 Naomi, especially, questions her memory of events as she was the one who suffered the most physical injuries in the attack.\u00a0 On her quest to find truth and a release from the burden of living with the knowledge that her testimony put a man in prison for the rest of his life, Naomi starts to uncover more parts to the story that cause her to question her memory, her family, and her friends.\u00a0 The more she more she finds out, the more she questions; and the more she questions, the more she wraps herself in a dangerous web of lies.<\/p>\n
Trigger warnings: Language, death, suicide, murder, mythological stories involving potions\/spells\/sacrifices, sexual content<\/p>\n
Why I read it: Book of the month pick<\/p>\n
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WOW.\u00a0 This book was intense!\u00a0 I have read so many thrillers that sometimes I feel kind of numb to their twists and shock factors (does that ever happen to anyone else?), but this one quite literally had me on the edge of my seat.\u00a0 I was guessing until the very end.\u00a0 I found myself thinking, \u201cOk, clearly there is more below the surface of what I\u2019m reading.\u201d \u00a0A few times I thought I had it figured out, and then found I might be half right, then I found out I was only a little right.\u00a0 The ending is complicated because there is a LOT going on and a lot happening, but it’s simple to follow.<\/p>\n
I loved how it took a \u201cpeeling the onion\u201d approach.\u00a0 The author only revealed little pieces of the mystery at a time and even used flashbacks to tell parts of the story.\u00a0 As a reader, I love the feeling of knowing in your gut a character is not what they appear, but then the writer does such a great job explaining away certainties that you end up questioning yourself (even if you know you\u2019re right).\u00a0 The back and forth journey on which the author takes the reader is done in an such an effective way because, even though the answer is not revealed until the very end of the book, the reader is still clear on what is happening on the narrator\u2019s journey to find the truth.<\/p>\n
The only reason this book didn\u2019t earn the second half of the star to give it a full five star rating is because I didn\u2019t love the main character.\u00a0 Naomi (the main character and narrator) is self-destructive and, while I get why the author chose to give her those attributes, I just feel like ascribing those kinds of self- destructive characteristics to a character with a troubled past and a less than ideal upbringing has been done so many times.\u00a0 Again, I get the author\u2019s reasoning, and I do find it believable.\u00a0 It just feels like it has been done so many times.<\/p>\n
If you like fast-paced thrillers that keep you guessing until the very end, you can’t go wrong with this book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"