My first thought finishing this book was “that was enthralling and entirely f-ed up”. It was obviously much more than that, but that thought pretty much sums it up.
When two girls are killed in her home town, reporter Camille Preaker returns home to follow the story. Like many people returning home, she finds it filled with even more ghosts than she remembers. The clearest of these is her sister who died when they were both kids.
This picture perfect small town isn’t the Mayberry it wants to be. The housewives hide secrets and everyone could be a suspect in the murders. Camille doesn’t get very far in her reporting before she is swept up in family drama. Her would be perfect mother is in turns overly doting and cold and distant. Her thirteen-year-old half sister is both the sweet daughter in pigtails their mother demands and a drug taking mean girl.
This book was almost as good as Jennifer McMahon’s books, but didn’t quite have the fairy tale feeling her’s do. Instead it was like a realistic and slightly off nightmare. From start to finish you’re dragged into this world and while it’s so interesting that you don’t want to be pulled out of it, it’s also massively disturbing.
Unfortunately everything I really loved about the book is very spoilerish, so I won’t go into it. Let’s just say this book has more than a few unexpected twists and chapter after chapter just takes you further down a dark rabbit hole