This is the first book from the brilliant author of the novel “Gone Girl.” The protagonist, Camille Preaker, is a journalist at a small newspaper agency in Chicago. To uncover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another, she needs to go back to her tiny hometown. But her life back in her hometown was dark and twisted. She ended up being an alcoholic and a cutter because of it.
Now, after a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, she visits her hometown after many years and is faced with more difficult and creepy situations than she could ever imagine. There is her neurotic, awful mother and her thirteen-year-old, beautiful but sinister stepsister, who has a weird grip on this town.

While trying to uncover and investigate the case, she finds out things that are too similar to her own past.
Everyone is a suspect, and everyone wants to hide something. She needs to solve the psychological puzzle of her own past and address her own demons to survive this time.
The end of this story has a plot twist no one can ever see coming. The writing is eerie, and the plot is dark and haunting. This is an exceptionally well-crafted story.

-Ariana