Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight
This is a complex whopper of a tale. There are so many characters that are integral to the plot, even though they aren't the three main women the story focuses on.
Molly, just emerging from a severe depression after losing her baby, is given a story reporting the discover of an infant's body near a creek on the grounds of the local university where her husband Justin teaches. Despite her husband's misgivings, she insists on reporting the story and eventually finds that this is not the first death found at that spot. There is also Sandy, a high school dropout trying to change her life despite all the odds being stacked against her. The last main character is Barbara. She is the typical, type-A PTA mom and wife of Steve, the chief of police.
The story alternates between each woman's story and is interspersed with the articles Molly writes, her notes from her psychologist visits, and Sandy's mother Jenna's high school diary. In addition to these characters there are Stella, Molly's best friend, with her children Aidan and Will; Barbara's and Steve's children Hannah and Cole; and Deckler, a supremely creepy university security guard. While we hear very little of the back story on these characters - and that only through the stories of the main ladies. But all these characters have a very major impact on the plot of the story.
I made the mistake of putting this book down for a week. When I picked it back up I was kind of lost, losing track of the relationships between the main characters and some of the tangential characters. Luckily I picked it up (mostly) pretty quickly (I'm still not entirely sure who one of the characters was, but that didn't effect the outcome). There are a LOT of threads the author is weaving together, but she does eventually bring them all together pretty deftly. I had trouble getting into the story, but once I was into it, I was all in. I did feel that the story was a little overcomplicated, but I did like the way the author seamlessly integrated the twists. I remember in Gone Girl, the author would drop a twist on the reader like dropping a grenade; it was so sudden I would have to go back a bit to see if I missed some pages. That kind of jarring experience really took me out of the story, so the smoother the transition, the better as far as I'm concerned.
Molly, just emerging from a severe depression after losing her baby, is given a story reporting the discover of an infant's body near a creek on the grounds of the local university where her husband Justin teaches. Despite her husband's misgivings, she insists on reporting the story and eventually finds that this is not the first death found at that spot. There is also Sandy, a high school dropout trying to change her life despite all the odds being stacked against her. The last main character is Barbara. She is the typical, type-A PTA mom and wife of Steve, the chief of police.
The story alternates between each woman's story and is interspersed with the articles Molly writes, her notes from her psychologist visits, and Sandy's mother Jenna's high school diary. In addition to these characters there are Stella, Molly's best friend, with her children Aidan and Will; Barbara's and Steve's children Hannah and Cole; and Deckler, a supremely creepy university security guard. While we hear very little of the back story on these characters - and that only through the stories of the main ladies. But all these characters have a very major impact on the plot of the story.
I made the mistake of putting this book down for a week. When I picked it back up I was kind of lost, losing track of the relationships between the main characters and some of the tangential characters. Luckily I picked it up (mostly) pretty quickly (I'm still not entirely sure who one of the characters was, but that didn't effect the outcome). There are a LOT of threads the author is weaving together, but she does eventually bring them all together pretty deftly. I had trouble getting into the story, but once I was into it, I was all in. I did feel that the story was a little overcomplicated, but I did like the way the author seamlessly integrated the twists. I remember in Gone Girl, the author would drop a twist on the reader like dropping a grenade; it was so sudden I would have to go back a bit to see if I missed some pages. That kind of jarring experience really took me out of the story, so the smoother the transition, the better as far as I'm concerned.
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