Review by Booklist Review
"Good night, pretty girl," the killer whispered as he pushed the knife into the girl. It was New Year's Eve, 1999. Five young people staffing a Blockbuster video store were slaughtered. The killer was never caught. Suddenly the novel jumps 15 years. Four teenage girls are attacked. One survives. She remembers hearing, before passing out, "Good night . . . " A chilling setup for a creepy thriller with links to a sinister past, and for a time, that's what we get. The girl who heard the first "Good night" survived and re-enters the story as, appropriately, a therapist counseling the new victim. With all cylinders burning on the hunt for a serial killer, the story takes an odd segue, briefly becoming a suburban slice of life with drivers ed, softball teams, and diaper bags, albeit one colored by depression: even a cocktail pianist must brood over the rotten turn his career has taken. Everything is wrapped up in the horror-movie finale, in which we learn the meaning of "Good night." A bit bifurcated, but it has its moments.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The pseudonymous Finlay's strong sophomore effort (after 2021's Every Last Fear) opens on New Year's Eve 1999 at a Linden, N.J., Blockbuster Video store, where the manager and three teenage employees are murdered; only a fourth employee, Ella Monroe, survives. The chief suspect, high school student Vince Whitaker, disappears. Fifteen years later, the words the killer whispered as he stabbed Ella, "Goodnight, pretty girl," still haunt her. When the Linden high school principal asks Ella, now a therapist, to counsel student Jessica Duvall, the only survivor of a copycat crime at a local ice cream store, she reluctantly agrees to do so. Thrust back into her nightmare, Ella struggles to help Jessica, who's fixated on the Blockbuster slayings. When Jessica is charged with the ice cream store murders, her public defender has reason to conceal his own ties to Whitaker. Meanwhile, as an FBI agent and a Linden police officer investigate, small-town secrets from the past and the present start to emerge. Finlay does a fine job weaving the tangled lives and crimes together in a suspenseful tale that's marred only by a forced conclusion. Thriller fans will eagerly await Finlay's next. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Fifteen years ago, someone murdered four young night-shift employees of a Blockbuster store and left a fifth for dead. The police arrested a local teen but soon released him because of insufficient evidence. Then he disappeared. Now an almost identical crime has taken place at a local ice cream shop--three night-shift employees killed, with one survivor, a teen in foster care. No one can deny the similarities between the two events. Ella, the lone survivor of the Blockbuster murders, is now a therapist who's asked to question the survivor of the Dairy Creamery murders, a high school student named Jesse Duval. As the investigation continues, Ella and Jesse discover they have more in common than being survivors. The public defender, Chris Ford, also has secrets about his connection to the Blockbuster case. As eight-months-pregnant FBI agent Sarah Keller works the Dairy Creamery case with local law enforcement, she discovers links between the two sensational murders. Will more people die before they discover the killer's identity? VERDICT Fans of dual-timeline thrillers with intricately connected characters will love Finlay's (Every Last Fear) fast-paced tale that delivers one stunning surprise after another.--K.L. Romo
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