Author: Laura Marshall
I love this sort of thriller story, basically because....it could really happen. Nothing supernatural. Nothing unrealistic. Just people being shitty to each other. Happens every day. Right? How many of us were totally shitty to someone in high school? Someone weaker than ourselves. Even once. I think we were all a crappy person at least once as a teenager. Some people just take it a lot further than just being a cranky, hormonal person. Some are weak and do things to fit in....to be a part of a crowd that requires them to hate this person, not speak to those sorts of people, to be mean to a certain person or type of person. How many of us ever made decisions based on what our group of friends, or others might think?
I remember I said something to a guy in high school once. He was being a bit of a jerk to me.....so I came back with something I knew would hurt him. Just to walk away feeling like I'd won. It was something not in my usual personality, and I shouldn't have said it. Years later, this guy killed himself. I've always wished I could somehow get a time machine and go back and un-say what I said to him that day. More than likely, he forgot that argument and what I said (nobody else heard it). But I remember it. And maybe, just maybe, he did too. And maybe that little thing I said snowballed in with everything else in his life and pushed him to that decision he made 10 years later. Who knows. I still wish I could undo it. Louise and her friends took the shitty behavior much further, but I certainly sympathize with Louise's wishes that she could undo what they all did.
That little bit of truth from my life is what made me identify with the main character, Louise, in this book just a little bit. Not entirely -- Louise is weak. I don't identify with her inability to be her own person. She has spent her entire life letting other people make her decisions for her because she is afraid to take control of her life. And her weakness hurt others around her. They hurt a girl -- the new girl she wasn't supposed to befriend because her clique wouldn't allow it -- and hid it for years. Their secret. But little did weak, whiney Louise know.....even she doesn't know the whole story of what happened that night.
Up until about 2/3 of the way through this book, I thought I knew what was going to happen. The story was a bit trope-y.....teenagers go too far, then hide what they did until their school reunion where they meet up as adults and act even more shitty. Trope, trope, trope through the tulips. But.....just as I thought I had it all predicted.....the story shifted a bit. It came in with one last twist that I didn't see coming.
Bravo!! Love it! The last 10 chapters of this book saved the entire thing for me. Nice suspense, good twisty nastiness......great til the end! And all with that social media this-could-happen-to-someone grit behind it.
This lovely bit of creepiness is Laura Marshall's debut novel. I can't wait to see what she writes next!
**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Grand Central Publishing through NetGalley. Opinions expressed are entirely my own.**
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