"When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, her own father had confessed to the crimes and was put away for life, leaving Chloe and the rest of her family to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now twenty years later, Chloe is a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. While she finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to achieve, she sometimes feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. So when a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, seeing parallels from her past that aren't actually there, or for the second time in her life, is Chloe about to unmask a killer?"
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A slow burning thriller that relies heavily on a familiar formula
This one has been sitting patiently on my to-be-read pile since 2022 and I have only just got round to reading it now!
The story introduces us to Chloe, whose father confessed to murdering several teenage girls when she was a child. Twenty years later, she is working as a psychologist when local girls start disappearing again, triggering all her old trauma and paranoia. It is a really interesting premise that hooks you early on, especially exploring the psychological impact of her past.
The atmosphere is quite thick and moody, which fits the Southern gothic setting well. Chloe is a deeply flawed and anxious narrator, which adds to the tension because you are never entirely sure if what she is seeing is real or just fueled by her past trauma and medication. The pacing does drag quite a bit in the middle section though. It felt like a lot of time was spent inside Chloe's head repeating the same doubts, which slowed down the momentum of the mystery.
My main issue was that the plot felt a bit predictable if you read a lot of psychological thrillers. A few of the twists were easy to spot ahead of time, and the final resolution wrapped up a bit too conveniently. It is a decent debut mystery that keeps you turning pages, but it just lacked that extra spark to make it stand out from the crowd.
A big thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts.
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