A compelling read I devoured in two or three days, this is a smalltown-set story where the occurrences of ten years previously still resonate and shape the characters' lives. Phoebe Dean died in a car accident after her brother crashed on a bridge returning from a party. In the back was Becca, who Grant Dean had been sleeping with (along with many others - as a football star and good looking guy he had his pick.) Since they were children he and Phoebe had made a pact to leave West Wibley together for college, him on a football scholarship, she on an academic one. Unfortunately he's also made a similar promise for a fresh start with Becca, a local girl who has a tendency towards obsessive behaviour when it comes to men she's slept with.
The title comes from the fact that it took Grant Dean 27 minutes to call for help from the estimated time of the accident - why? Becca has little memory of the accident but Grant helps her put the pieces together. She still wants them to be together but he insists they wait, claiming it won't look good after his sister's death. A decade on, she's still waiting. 
Another family waiting for resolution is June and her mother. That same night her brother Wyatt, another sports star, disappears, never to be seen again. Little is made of his disappearance - unlike the sainted Phoebe, he'd been in trouble with the police, including for drugs, and the general feeling was that his drug debts had caught up with him, or he'd left town before they did. A year later his father departs too, and June is left with her mother, who finds solace in a bottle and dies early in the book from liver cancer. Only June and one other person turn up at the funeral, which shows how the close-knit caring community is a fallacy that people only pay lip service to.
Phoebe had been coming concerned about Grant losing focus on his football, and nagging him about her suspicions he was involved in steroids and recreational drugs with Wyatt. She despised him seeing other girls as she felt that was another distraction. There had been no funeral for Phoebe when she died, her mother seemingly too heartbroken (she always favoured Phoebe over Grant, who resembled his late father who'd left her with a two year old and a baby to bring up alone.) But ten years on, she decides the time is right to hold a memorial - which is when we find out what exactly happened in the run-up to the party the night of the crash, and why it took Grant twenty seven minutes to call for help - a decision which cost his sister her life, and set in motion a series of events which will be fully revealed the night of the memorial...
The male characters in the book are pretty repugnant, whereas the females are regarded as one dimensional by the townsfolk - "Crazy" Becca, invisible June, sainted Phoebe...When Wyatt makes a shock reappearance, and Becca's memory snaps out of her self medicating fogginess, the stage is set for a reveal that ensures no one will quite see the events of a decade ago in the same light. 
I found the author had a real talent for descriptive writing, and although there could have been more fleshing out of the town and it's other inhabitants, there's enough here to please fans of other small town tales (Megan Miranda, a favourite of mine, springs to mind, as does Laura McHugh, another real talent) and thrillers, particularly those of the psychological variety. I'll certainly be on the lookout for the author's next book. Definitely worth a read if these are your taste in books.