This one deals with serious themes — grief, loss and a criminal investigation — and a lot of adults lying to children for their own comfort. It isn't a gentle read. Nothing below spoils the ending.
The set-up
In the town of Sunnybrook, five cheerleaders died within about a month of each other. Two in a car accident. Two murdered. And then Monica's older sister Jen, days later. The town shut the whole thing in a box labelled tragedy, built a memorial, and moved on the way small towns do — loudly, and not at all.
Five years later Monica is sixteen, still carrying all of it, and she finds a stash of her sister's things in her stepfather's desk. He's a police officer. He never mentioned it. And once you've noticed one thing that doesn't fit, you can't un-notice it.
The book alternates between Monica now and Jen five years ago, which is the smartest thing about it. You get to know Jen as a person — irritating, funny, in over her head — long before the mystery closes around her. By the time the two timelines start closing on each other, you're not solving a puzzle any more. You're hoping, stupidly, for a different ending.
It's not really a book about who did it. It's a book about a family still grieving five years on, and a town that would rather not remember.
What I loved
- Monica's voice. She's angry and sarcastic and making genuinely bad decisions, and the book never once punishes her for it or asks you to find her cute. She's allowed to be a mess. That's rare and I loved it.
- The pacing. Short chapters, each one ending on something that makes putting the book down feel like a personal failure.
- The grief is real grief. Not the tidy movie kind. It's five years old and still ambushing people in supermarkets. The Rayburn family is not healing in a straight line, and the book lets that be true.
- How it treats the girls who died. The town turned them into a cautionary tale and a photo montage. The book keeps insisting they were people, with secrets and terrible taste in music and unfinished homework. That insistence is the whole point.
- The adults are properly written. Not cardboard obstacles — people who lied for reasons that made sense to them at 2am five years ago and now can't take it back.
What bugged me
- The middle gets crowded. There's a stretch where I genuinely could not keep the various Sunnybrook men straight, and I had to flip back twice. A couple of them exist mostly to be suspicious.
- Everyone in this town is awful. Which is atmospheric for the first two hundred pages and slightly exhausting after. I kept wanting one adult to just be normal.
- The ending is more sad than satisfying. I don't mean that as a criticism exactly — it earns it — but if you want a thriller that clicks shut like a box, this isn't quite that. It ends the way these things actually end: with an answer that doesn't fix anything.
That last one is why it's a 4.5 and not a 5. I closed it feeling hollow rather than floored. Though honestly? A book that can make me feel hollow is doing something right.
Read this if…
- You liked One of Us Is Lying but wanted something darker and sadder.
- You're a true-crime-podcast person who feels a bit weird about being a true-crime-podcast person. This book is quietly about exactly that.
- You have a sibling and don't mind a book that goes straight for the heart.
- You want a mystery where the mystery isn't the actual point.
Skip it if…
- You're not in the mood for something heavy right now. Genuinely — it'll be there later. (Go here instead.)
- You need every loose thread tied off and every character to get what they deserve.
The one-line version
A thriller that's secretly about grief, and one that never forgets the people at the centre of it were somebody's daughters. Bring snacks and clear your evening — but maybe not on a school night.