Intending to build a safe new identity out of the ashes, Tuesday changed her last name and moved away. She’s now a private investigator who guards herself and her daughter, Julia, like their lives depend on it. And maybe they do. Because unless she’s imagining things, Tuesday has seen Arsen on the streets of Saint Paul. She’d know her sister’s killer anywhere.
When bodies begin surfacing bearing the Crying Killer’s brutal and unmistakable signature, Tuesday is certain he’s coming for them. Except no one believes that but her. As her paranoia intensifies, she is left with a terrible unearth the shocking secret she buried with her sister, or become the Crying Killer’s next victim.
Before I even get into the review itself, I have one complaint that's slightly off-topic, although I suspect it's more of a publisher issue than an author one.
Please stop putting pages upon pages of glowing praise for an author's previous books at the beginning of a novel. It's not helpful. If anything, it's annoying. Most readers simply don't care. Either we've already read those books and formed our own opinions about them, or this is our first experience with the author and we'd like to do exactly that with the book we're holding in our hands.
The same goes for the lengthy author introduction that appeared before the story even began. I don't need an entire chapter explaining the fascination with serial killers before I start reading a fictional thriller. I picked up the book because I wanted to read the novel, not the author's rationale for writing it.
By the time I'd skipped what felt like an endless number of pages just to reach the prologue, I was already starting this book on the wrong foot.
Thankfully, things improved from there.... for a minute.
In fact, I think this may be the first book I've read by this author that landed above the one or two star range for me. That's not to say it didn't have problems, it absolutely did, but this time those problems were a little less... irritating than usual.
One thing I genuinely appreciated was that, although the story takes place in the same small town as several of the author's previous novels, you don't need to have read any of them to understand what's happening here. The references to earlier books are mostly treated as local legends or cautionary tales, making them fun little callbacks for longtime readers without alienating newcomers.
What I didn't enjoy, however, was seeing the author once again fall back on a pattern I've noticed in several of their books, where many of the male characters are portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative light. Here, that tendency felt even more pronounced because one character who initially appears to be Tuesday's unwavering best friend later returns after transitioning and the story takes their arc in a direction that completely changed how I viewed that relationship. I'll leave the specifics for readers to discover themselves, but it was a storytelling choice that didn't entirely work for me.
One area where I do think the book succeeded was Tuesday herself. Watching her slowly unravel while desperately trying to keep herself together gave the story an emotional weight that many of the author's previous novels have lacked. Even when I didn't fully understand some of her choices or the things she said, I could at least understand the emotional state that led her there. That made her far more compelling to follow than I expected.
As for the twists... they were a mixed bag.
One worked well enough, but another I saw coming from a mile away.
And the third?
The third made me question the entire purpose of another major plotline because... wow. And not in a good way. I genuinely didn't realize someone apparently had to die in order to "find themselves," but that seems to be the conclusion the story wanted me to reach.
Overall, this is another one of those books that I can easily see working better for other readers than it did for me. While it didn't completely win me over, I enjoyed it more than I expected to, and if the synopsis catches your attention, or you're already a fan of this author's work, I think it's worth giving this one a chance.
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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