What Hurts the Most by Willow Rose

What Hurts the Most is a psychological thriller and is the first in a series.

Mary Mills has had better days. She has just been fired from her job as a journalist for a good piece of work and received a phone call to say that her brother has been arrested and charged with murder. She packs up her son and heads off to Cocoa Beach where she grew up, determined to clear his name. The problem is that she is running right back to the people and problems she left behind; including an ex-husband, a manipulative stepmother, a downtrodden father, and a group of friends she hung out with known as the 7^Th Street Crew. The case becomes more sinister as more bodies turn up and Mary gets threatened by some very high levels in the military base in her old hometown. As past and present collide and old hatred rears its head, can Mary find the help she needs from her old crew or will she be one of the next bodies?

This is one of the better works by the author and I enjoyed the psychological aspects of it. It takes a bit of time, in the beginning, to get your head around all of the characters and their timelines as they only come together much later in the story. As you are fed more and more clues you start piecing it together and then find out your assumptions are incorrect. The whole idea behind it must be read with artistic licence as once you start questioning certain aspects or actions, some incidents don’t tie together (like a certain photo at the end) or actions being strange (a group of friends who are now adults are all still afraid of the school bully but all working together to break the law and fight for justice). These can be overlooked to enjoy the story in its entirety.

The writing is good but I did find some jumps between 1^st and 3^rd person POV for the same character which caused a jolt in the reading experience. Take the story with a pinch of salt and enjoy the tale for what it is: an enjoyable afternoon’s read with a twist that you didn’t see coming.