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“The silence around me so heavy and charged it feels like a physical thing, thick and meaty”

A darkly Southern thriller, fronted by an impulsive and somewhat unpredictable heroine, with more than a few surprises up its sleeve.

Claire Campbell, a not-very-successful reporter, is thirty-three years old, and is finding life even more difficult as a now freelance journalist in New York City. Still reeling from the loss of her older sister, Natalie, twenty-two years ago, Claire has also never resolved her relationship with her distant and fiercely-independent mother and has only one “close” friend to speak of — Ryan, a former colleague, who is nonetheless someone Claire still keeps at arms length, and is not averse to telling the occasional whopper of a lie to.

When an unlucky turn forces her back home to assist her mother in South Carolina, Claire finds herself confronting her traumatic past, along with handsome Liam, and some additional creepy characters occupying Galloway, a cult-like farm and commercial vineyard based in the rural outskirts of her home town.

When Claire uncovers a hidden diary set in the year 1983, past and present begin to collide, as secrets tantalizingly unfold and life, as Claire knows it, is forever changed. Told now in alternating timelines, as Claire (in the present), and the diary-writer (in a voice based forty-odd years ago) tell their stories, Claire’s search for answers soon results in a complex and sinister outpouring of evil, that quickly becomes more than a little dangerous for all of those it touches.

An interesting read with perhaps an overly meandering pace followed then by one quick closing twist too many, the story kept this reader mostly hooked, right up to the resulting final wallop of surprises — only a few of which this reader guessed beforehand.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.