Laura Lippman is another author recommended to me after my recent Gillian Flynn binge. She has a weighty volume of work to choose from, but I was drawn to the description of Every Secret Thing for my first .
11 year olds Ronnie and Alice are neighborhood friends unexpectedly -- and perhaps unjustly -- banished from a classmate's birthday party at the community pool. In their short walk home, a shocking crime will change both girls' lives forever. The story picks up seven years later, when both Ronnie and Alice are released from the juvenile justice system for their parts in the death of a baby girl that fateful day back in sixth grade. Both girls are deeply damaged by their experience, but trying to adjust to a new adult life and move on. However, just days after the girls move back to the neighborhood, another child disappears under ominous circumstances, and everyone involved in the old case immediately considers them suspects. To solve the new missing child case, however, they first must unravel the real story of what happened seven years ago.
I enjoyed the story, which contained some genuine surprises, but no huge mind-blowing twists. Like many books of this genre, there is a serious shortage of likeable characters, but Lippman still manages to make them interesting. However, I wish the story had not been framed within the police procedural structure. If there had been a bit less focus on the detective team, I would have been more enthusiastic, I think. I would have liked to see more through the lens of teenaged Ronnie and Alice, and maybe even more flashbacks of what happened the afternoon after the girls left the birthday party.
This book isn't among my favorite in the genre, but I'm interesting in reading more by Lippman.
11 year olds Ronnie and Alice are neighborhood friends unexpectedly -- and perhaps unjustly -- banished from a classmate's birthday party at the community pool. In their short walk home, a shocking crime will change both girls' lives forever. The story picks up seven years later, when both Ronnie and Alice are released from the juvenile justice system for their parts in the death of a baby girl that fateful day back in sixth grade. Both girls are deeply damaged by their experience, but trying to adjust to a new adult life and move on. However, just days after the girls move back to the neighborhood, another child disappears under ominous circumstances, and everyone involved in the old case immediately considers them suspects. To solve the new missing child case, however, they first must unravel the real story of what happened seven years ago.
I enjoyed the story, which contained some genuine surprises, but no huge mind-blowing twists. Like many books of this genre, there is a serious shortage of likeable characters, but Lippman still manages to make them interesting. However, I wish the story had not been framed within the police procedural structure. If there had been a bit less focus on the detective team, I would have been more enthusiastic, I think. I would have liked to see more through the lens of teenaged Ronnie and Alice, and maybe even more flashbacks of what happened the afternoon after the girls left the birthday party.
This book isn't among my favorite in the genre, but I'm interesting in reading more by Lippman.
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