My thoughts
This is one book that I highly recommend. It is very sad so be warned. It's also beautifully written. This author's last book, "Please See Us', was also excellent.
This one is about two young girls. Two young girls who are left to their own devices. To fend for themselves. In a big house. Whose mother left. Whose dad is never around. He is a pair of books left at the door. A little money left for them to buy food. Two young girls who have been abandoned by the towns adults. Their teachers. This is the story of Annabelle and Sabrina. Twins. Just barely teens.
There is also Callie. Callie moved back to her hometown of Pine Lakes to help her best friend Jane. Jane is married to the former police chief's son. Callie becomes the police chief. She is in law enforcement and well qualified for the job. Her best friend was struck by a car and hurt pretty bad. She can barely walk and has a three year old daughter.
There is a lot of back story and it's very good. This story goes back and forth between Callie and Annabelle. Annabelle's story is thirty years old. Callie is looking into the disappearance of Annabelle and her twin Sabrina.
This is a story of how Callie and her own mother get along. What happened to Callie's mother Jenna was a single mother. She was not the best mother but she stayed. And she drank...
I loved how this story came to be called Heather. Sad but also beautiful. A strong story of learning to deal with your life choices. Learning how starting over can come back to bite you. How finding justice is not always what you think it is. How young girls deal with what older men do. And how older men deal with threats....
I didn't want to put this one down. It was heartbreaking and a beautiful story at the same time. Beautiful in the sense of innocence. Heartbreaking in the exact same sense....
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for this ARC. Thank you to Celadon Books for ths physical copy.
This one will stick for a good long while.
The narrators did a wonderful job of bringing this story to life. Of differentiating the characters. Of holding my attention all the way through. Great job!!
5 big stars and it's in the top of my books for the years.
About
For readers of Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, a small-town detective reopens an unsolved case, sending shock waves across generations of women in this gripping new mystery from the Edgar Award–winning author of Please See Us.
1994. In the myth-riddled woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, sixteen-year-old Annabelle Riley’s twin sister, Sabrina, has been having an affair with a mysterious older man, and Annabelle is determined to uncover what’s going on. Then, inexplicably, both sisters disappear.
In this same town years later, newly instated Police Chief Callie Hauser makes an arrest that unexpectedly resurrects details from a heartbreaking cold case. As she digs deeper, the past and the present collide, challenging everything Callie believes about right and wrong, about who she is, and about the town she’s always called home.
A propulsive mystery as incisive as it is forgiving, Heather bears a visceral reminder that the truth of a woman’s life is often complicated and unknowable—to those on the outside, and sometimes even to herself.
1994. In the myth-riddled woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, sixteen-year-old Annabelle Riley’s twin sister, Sabrina, has been having an affair with a mysterious older man, and Annabelle is determined to uncover what’s going on. Then, inexplicably, both sisters disappear.
In this same town years later, newly instated Police Chief Callie Hauser makes an arrest that unexpectedly resurrects details from a heartbreaking cold case. As she digs deeper, the past and the present collide, challenging everything Callie believes about right and wrong, about who she is, and about the town she’s always called home.
A propulsive mystery as incisive as it is forgiving, Heather bears a visceral reminder that the truth of a woman’s life is often complicated and unknowable—to those on the outside, and sometimes even to herself.
