Thank you to the author, publisher Headline, and online book club The Pigeonhole for the chance to read this. This is an honest and voluntary review.

 

As the 10 year anniversary of Phoebe Dean’s death approaches the truth surrounding the night she died and the legacy it has left in the town begins to unravel.

 

A dark, complex story. The tone reminded me of both We Begin at the End and Tall Bones. Sins of the past revisited on the young who are let down by the adults who should be supporting them.

 

It’s always difficult to read a book where the characters are largely unlikable. June, who loses her mother at the start of the book, and is reunited with her older brother who went missing around the time Phoebe died, is the closest thing to a sympathetic character. But, I didn’t really feel that I got to know her as she remained confused and conflicted.

 

I wonder if it may have worked better if we had seen life for the group of main characters before things fell apart. There are references to rifts between families in generations before that added to conflict, but no explanation is given of this nor do we see its impact in anything but a third hand reference.

 

The reader is expected to do quite a lot of the work in providing the context for this small town life. If I hadn’t read other books or watched TV shows that talked about the importance of sports and the idolatry of high school sports stars in American small towns the book would have made even less sense to me.

 

In saying all of that the writing style is beautiful. I’d just like to see a bit more time spent on character development and plot.