Diana Wolf has woken up from an alcoholic blackout regretting it again. And, as usual, she has spent an exorbitant amount of money on something she doesn’t need. But since she can’t remember what she bought, this could be interesting.
Cue Kerry Perkins, the cartographer she
hired while in her haze to map out their estate. Kerry arrives and realises it
will take some time, as the estate is very large. Diana needs to hide him
somewhere for the week to do the work as her rock-star husband won’t be happy
with her latest drunken purchase.
On the first day, Kerry comes across a
buried skeleton, and carved into the skull is a picture of two wolves. When he
calls Diana in to see this, she feigns surprise, but Kerry can see that she has
recognised something. Enter the police and investigators and things start
getting very weird when family secrets involving the sons, Cy and Jonah, are revealed
for the deep lies they are. Not only in actions, but also in bonds.
Kerry becomes suspicious that the body was
not just a random stranger and starts doing some investigating of his own. This
leads him to Pink, an obsessed stalker of the Wolf family, who knows far too
much about them. Together, they uncover horrifying information about the family
as very often, where there is one body, others might follow.
I have to admit that I pushed through this
book. It started off well and grabbed me, then in places I’d want to skim as
the jumps between characters and time became confusing. This made the book feel
longer than it actually was, and not in a good way.
I did enjoy the constant questioning of
what was real and what wasn’t, whether it was an incident or a connection to
someone. However, the main plot that held the book together branched out so
much at the end that it went from being believable to being too far-fetched. I
was with it through most of the way, nodding my head, and then went NOPE. Just
NOPE. Plus, added to that, the ending came so suddenly it was like the author
knew where he was going, but had spent so much getting there that he ran out of
steam to bring it together smoothly. There were two parts to the ending that I
felt stretched believability too much. This was disappointing, as in places I thought
I had the tone of the book and felt comfortable knowing that the ending would
be plausible.
I didn’t connect with any of the characters
and I felt as though the author made them deliberately not likeable so that
there were no “heroes”. I think the part I felt the strongest about involved a
dog… I’ll leave it at that. I was glad that the story had no major grammar and punctuation
errors, as this made for an easy reading experience.
Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to review this book.
