Simon & Schuster, April 11, 2017.
Four Stars
Leah Stevens is a disgraced journalist who has to
leave Boston, after being accused of fabricating a source and ruining a man’s
life. She is facing a restraining order and a potential lawsuit, when she runs
into an old college friend, Emmy Grey, who offers her the perfect escape. Emmy
is moving to rural Pennsylvania to escape a troubled relationship, and she
invites Leah to share the rental house with her.
Leah is relieved to have a chance to start over – she
gets a job teaching at the local high school and tries to put her past behind
her, slowly adapting to quiet, small-town life. But just when things are
starting to settle down, a woman is assaulted near Leah and Emmy’s house – and she
bears a striking resemblance to Leah. Before she can understand what exactly
this means for her, Leah realizes that Emmy has disappeared – a possible victim
of the same attacker.
Detective Kyle Donovan works with Leah to search for
clues about Emmy’s whereabouts, but they both soon realize that Leah knows very
little about her friend – in fact, Emmy’s entire existence is called into
question. She has no social media presence, and no paper trail leading to her supposed
jobs and residences. To make matters more complicated, Leah’s intimacy with
Kyle begins to jeopardize the whole case – as her credibility is called into
question, Leah must confront her own past to clear her name and save Emmy.
Before long, it seems like everyone in their small Pennsylvania town has
shocking secrets to hide.
This slow-paced thriller is filled with clever
twists, made all the more eerie by how real they seem – the circumstances Leah
finds herself in could happen to anyone, and it forces us to question how well
we can ever know the people we call friends. The reality of Leah and Emmy’s
lives is uncertain and unreliable, with the ground constantly shifting beneath
the reader. Although I didn’t love the characters, I did begin to really
believe in them, and their very bad decisions. Their story was dark and complex
– even though I guessed some things, it all came together in a very unexpected and
satisfying way.
I received this book from Simon & Schuster and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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