thank you netgalley, ashley tate & poisoned pen press for providing me with the arc for twenty-seven minutes

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the description of the book really peaked my interest. the prologue and epilogue were both beautifully written. the prologue really grabbed my attention and pulled me in. the plot twist at the end was something i hadn’t been expecting at all, i sat in my bed shocked at how i hadn’t pieced the twist together in my own mind. i think it was a very unique idea (or maybe i haven’t read as many crime thrillers as i think i have) & i thought it was executed flawlessly, i just wish that it had been revealed a little bit earlier on in the book to keep it interesting.

the pacing was quite slow. like i mentioned before, the prologue really drew me in, but after about 10-15% in, it draggeddddd until the last 10%. not sure if this was done to build suspense or what but i was skimming certain people’s povs/chapters and that’s probably the reason i finished this book so quickly, otherwise it would’ve definitely dragged out longer. 

i liked the time jumps going back ten years to the night of the accident for backstory but i didn’t like that in the present day, the characters were still living & acting like they were teenagers when they were actually like thirty. they also kinda acted and spoke like phoebe’s death was like a week ago & still fresh rather than ten years ago.

i wouldn’t say the cast was stale but they were unlikeable as fuck. grant gave like major fuck boy energy but double the manipulation/gaslighting & anger issues. but the WORST one had to be fucking becca. the pick me girl vibes that i got from her was enough to make me want to skip her chapters completely, but i also love drama so i sat through it. “i have trauma too i was there why is no one feeling bad for me 🥺🥺🥺” girl. by far the most unlikeable character for me. i didn’t really connect with any of the characters but by the end of the book, june was the character i had the least amount of complaints about. also..is it just me or were grant & phoebe very ….. incesty??? like the way she was so possessive of him & how other characters described grant’s love for her, i was like.. oh! okay then.

anyway to wrap up since i just be yapping at this point, thank you again to netgalley, ashley tate and poisoned pen press for providing me with the arc for this book

I’ll start with what I liked. I loved the look at grief in this book. Between Grant, his mom and really the whole town grieving Phoebe and June losing her mom and feeling alone in her sadness, I thought the way the author wrote about grief was the best part of the book. The big twist at the end, I probably should have seen coming, but I didn’t and I did think it was a pretty good one. It made sense and everything fit together pretty well. I did also enjoy the back and forth timelines and the multiple POVs. Now onto what didn’t work for me and it’s a big one: the characters. There was not a single character that made me care about them. Grant and Wyatt were frustratingly vague and mysterious. Becca had her moments of fascination, but I honestly just wanted to shake her for the majority of the book. June, I had a bit of sympathy for, but she had absolutely no personality. Also, there was so much opportunity to dig in deeper with these characters like Grant’s relationship with his mom and Becca’s mental health issues, but they’re felt glossed over to me. And PHOEBE. My god. She was obnoxious. How she had that whole town in the palm of her hand, I’ll never know. Overall, this was a miss for me, but again I did appreciate how well the topic of grief was done in this book. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an advanced digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

 disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial  

This was an intriguing (enough) debut of a thriller/mystery! I was expecting teen fiction, but that's on me. I didn't realize this would be an adult thriller. Anyway, the book rotates between four different POVs (Becca, Grant, June, & Wyatt), and two timelines: one in the present, and one from ten years ago when the big, elusive accident happened. Ten years ago, Grant got into a car accident with Becca and his younger sister Phoebe in the car, & Phoebe passed away. Everyone in the small town wonders why it took Grant 27 minutes to call emergency medical services, & now Grant's mom is hosting a 10-year memorial for Phoebe just as the town votes on a bill to destroy the bridge or not. It's clearly causing Grant a LOT of stress, and it brings up memories for June, Becca, & Wyatt too. 

I will say that in true thriller fashion, the chapters are quite short so you don't spend too much time getting to know each of the four main characters. I felt most pulled towards Becca's POV, mostly because I found her to be the most compelling, as she seemed to be nearing a mental and emotional breakdown. I also knew that her reality was a bit augmented, and was curious how the finale would turn out for her. To be honest, I usually can guess where a thriller is taking me and I wasn't expecting the final reveal at *all*, but I also wasn't fully invested in two of the four characters' POVs, so that's possibly why. I think the reveal is the best part of the book, because it did lull in the middle there. 

The part of this book that irked me the most was the setup and insights we were given into Phoebe and Grant's brother-sister relationship. Is this how siblings act???? I have an older brother and a younger sister, and I do not represent all siblings everywhere, but their relationship felt almost reminiscent of Cersei and Jamie Lannister to me at times. Idk, maybe it's just me, but that sibling relationship felt a bit off to me and kind of took me out! 

I read this in one sitting because I had to figure out what the big reveal would be! While I felt the dialogue was a bit staccato and stale at times, I would still give the author another try in the future! 

This book had way too many POV’s which took away from the story

 ~~NETGALLEY REVIEW~~

  The story opens up with a death. After that follows four POVs ten years after the fact, with grief being a big theme. Occasionally there is time jumps back in time the ten years around the death.
  Each of the four POVs were very interesting. There was one character I didn't entirely care for, he just seemed like a jack wagon. But it was still interesting to have his POV as well. 
  In one way or another each character was connected, wether it was directly or in directly. For the twist at the end, I wasn't entirely expecting. I thought it was going one way, went it went another. 
  If you're into mysteries or thrillers, I highly suggest picking this up once it's published.