Print Length: 351 pages
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (June 24, 2025)
From Goodreads.com: When a true crime series chronicles the tragic childhood summer that changed her life forever, a young woman must grapple with the truth about her father…and herself.
Jennifer Jones and her best friends spend every summer at Big Cypress Swamp, and this summer, Jennifer will finally turn eleven. She hopes to gain the “second sight” foretold by family legend and fulfill her destiny. Instead, the swamp serves up dangers greater than the gators lurking on Halfway Creek. Little Francie Farrow vanishes—and Jennifer’s father goes to prison.
Twenty years later, Jennifer has almost shed the label of Paul Jones’s daughter when her past comes barreling back. Inspired by True Events, a TV series that solves the unsolvable, is recreating that fateful summer. As the series plays out, Jennifer Did the show finally find Francie Farrow? And is Jennifer’s father truly guilty?
Someone else wants answers even more than Jennifer does, and they won’t let her forget it.
As the series nears its finale and the long-awaited truth, Jennifer must come to terms with who her family is…and what that makes her.
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My Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5
While the premise of this novel was compelling, sadly the execution fell horribly flat for me.
To begin with there are two things that stuck out to me right away. One with such as basic name as Jennifer Jones, why didn't she just move somewhere else and start over? No one would have known who she was, and when the story first started airing if people had asked she could have denied it. The second thing that stuck out to me was why, if she had clung to the belief that her father was innocent for twenty years did this show suddenly have her questioning that belief? Yes, she was too young to really understand things when they happened, but surely over the years she would have looked into what had been written about the case? I know I would have in her shoes. It would have been more interesting had the television show presented new facts, or something that went against what she knew and didn't just paint her father as the bad guy in the second to last episode something she had to expect considering he had been arrested (albeit for something else, but it still made it seem likely he was involved in Francie's disappearance as well).
Then there is the fact that the story itself was all over the place. I understood that we would likely be getting flashbacks of the past due to the television series. What I did not expect was how we would also be getting them other times. Nor did I expect how often the story would jump narratives. Sometimes these things happened mid-chapter without warning, and I was left having to go back and re-read passages more than once just to make sure I was understanding things correctly.
I had also thought that the television series was going to actually mean something to the plot. And sure it did for one final part of it, as that was the key Jennifer needed to put the whole thing together, but other than that it seemed wholly unnecessary with Jennifer's "present day" letters to her father talking about those events that happened that summer as well. Personally, I would have found it to be more interesting had the television show tried to present facts that weren't entirely truthful, lighting a fire under her to prove them wrong.
There were a few other sub-plots that I know were thrown in for shock value, but I didn't find them to be particularly shocking or entirely needed. One in particular I feel definitely could have been handled better considering everything that had happened and not only to poor Francie.
In the end, however, I do think this novel will work for other people and I would give this author another shot down the road.
DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.
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