Kim Deister
The story is told through alternating timelines, that of the 1970s and 2017. The present is narrated by Shea, a true-crime blogger who suffers from the aftermath of her own trauma. The past is told by Beth, a woman accused and acquitted of two murders, whom Shea is interviewing for her blog. The author has created an incredible eeriness in both the mood and the setting of the novel. One of the reasons I found the book so riveting was the narrators, who were both unreliable in their own ways. Shea’s childhood trauma has affected her life, affected her ability to live a normal life, affected the way she looks at the world around her. And Beth… what to say about Beth? It’s hard to feel for her in any warm way. The presumed “murderess” label aside, she’s cold, manipulative, and calculating. For reasons of her own, she’s chosen Shea to finally tell her story… but in her own way. And Beth doesn’t make it easy on Shea. In a way, that almost makes Shea’s part of the story a kind of coming-of-age moment. The way Beth often dances around parts of her story pushes Shea to do things she might not otherwise have done, pushing her to grow. That really drives the story in a lot of ways and makes it interesting.
