i can’t wait to see what ashley did with this book!! she’s such a great podcaster. literally PRAYING i get this arc 😭😭 i am not above begging The police think Krissy died by suicide based on the note she left (which was actually part of a letter to Jase.) My biggest problem is that this is basically a fictionalisation of a theory about a real-life child that has not only lost her life tragically but also been made into a media spectacle and now this book does even mention that?! How is that not disrespectful? I just cannot fathom the balls to do that. Can't. Nope. This life—her family, their farm and house—wasn’t what she’d wanted, wasn’t even close, but it was more than she’d ever had before, and so she held on to it, hands tight.” That being said, I couldn’t agree more with you and your thoughts on this book! I do not understand why Luke/Dave wouldn’t have said something about Billy. Did he? Did I miss the explanation somewhere?? – is all I could think after finishing… I would love to hear Ashely’s thoughts on this.

Now, rather than keep ranting I am going to finish with the ending… my god that ending. Trash is all I can say. It was suppose to create suspense and have us wondering and hoping… but it just leaves the reader hanging with no resolution - but then the epilogue gives a play by play of another part of the book which took hand holding to the maximum. It was complete rubbish I hated the ending. It completely ruined the entire book and any parts that could have been good for me. 😡 I was intrigued by both cases. The unsolved murder of the main characters childhood neighbor in 1994 and the disappearance of another little girl two decades later. I was also intrigued by everything going on in Margot's private life.Never assume you’re safe in a small town. Fewer CCTV cameras, fewer cell towers, lots of secrets. In books at least. (Crime Junkie Rule #4: You Never Really Know Anyone.) This is a complicated mystery, that Margot, as a journalist, returning home to care for her uncle, would like to solve. I'm not going to lie, I was a little sceptical about how good this audio book would be, but I'm a Crime Junkie so HAD to at least give it a go. Well my generosity went out the door the more I thought about this most convoluted, ridiculous fell off the cliff ending and the time I wasted reading this book. I understand the plot-related reasons to keep Luke’s mind muddled. 1) He can’t tell Margot that he was actually January and Jace’s father OR that he told Billy this on the day January died. 2) He can’t tell anyone what he and Krissy discussed the day she died. 3) He can remain a suspect in Krissy’s murder.

Also, all these so called ‘similar’ cases I have to say that is a super stretch - clearly Margot is used to jamming a round peg into a square hole because while I was reading the details of the cases the only similarity was that they had their heads bashed in (and I use the same language that the author uses to describe blunt force trauma to the little girls heads). I don’t think the cases were similar to January’s case at all - but maybe that was the point I don’t know. Chasing ghosts and all that. 👻Krissy’s secret lover Jodie wrote all the warning notes and messages. In 2009, after Krissy confided in Jodie that she had been the one to stage January’s death as a murder, Krissy says she’s going to tell Dave the truth. Also, when Billy kills Krissy, he says, “You shouldn’t have lied to me.” Uh… like 15 years too late, right? I mean, if he wanted to call her out for lying, wouldn’t he have done that a long time before? Why did he kill her anyway? I guess we’re supposed to assume it’s because he found the note in her purse. But then, wouldn’t he have said, “So, you know what happened, huh? I can’t have you telling anyone…” or something like that? I know this was to conceal who the killer was, but it was really ill-fitting. The whole suicide story was actually pretty unconvincing. The police never looked into it further? They never tested for gunshot residue? They didn’t find it suspicious that half of Krissy’s letter was torn off or that she lying by the door with her purse out, as if she was getting ready to leave? The had noticed a tiny bit of blood on Jase’s pajamas all those years before; could they not find any blood on Billy’s clothes? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have looked into this very deeply, given the family’s history. But maybe we’re supposed to just accept that the police were so convinced of Jace or Krissy’s guilt that they accepted suicide without investigating at all. Again, that seems ridiculous.