Review by Booklist Review
This haunting murder mystery has everything: gothic overtones, gruesome murders, a psycho killer, dysfunctional families, teen angst, sex, and plenty of shocking twists. A tragic mistake made Rowan leave medicine and escape her demons by moving to bleak, crime-ridden Black Harbor, Wisconsin, where she became the town medical examiner. There she met cop Axel, and they married and had their daughter, Chloe, now a teenager. Chloe has been cast in the school production of Beetlejuice and takes on her character's darkness, changing her hair, makeup, and clothing so she's nearly unrecognizable. On the night of the play, Rowan and Axel are called out to a crime scene: one of Chloe's classmates has been brutally slaughtered, and Chloe has disappeared. Soon afterwards, another schoolgirl is viciously killed. Rowan and Axel are desperate to stop the killer, but they're even more desperate to find their daughter. Suspicion falls on everyone from classmates to the school's acting teacher, but the real truth is as horrifying and tragic as it is bizarre--and yet, there's still a satisfying ending to this taut, suspense-filled story.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a sleepy Wisconsin town, one girl is gone, two more brutally murdered. As medical examiner Rowan Winthorp scrutinizes the corpse of teenager Madison Caldwell, she reflects on her 18 years in the "purgatory" of grim Black Harbor, Wisconsin. Madison, the best friend of Rowan's daughter, Chloe, has been found strangled to death in a gully. Repeated attempts to contact Chloe fail, and Rowan comes to the slow realization that her daughter is missing. Morrissey's second Black Harbor thriller drops the gothic trappings of her debut and goes straight for the jugular, with gruesome twists and intimations of menace from every quarter. Libby Lucas, a strange teenager who dabbles in taxidermy, harbors several secrets related to the murder. Ditto neighborhood hottie Reeves Singh, who was Madison's boyfriend. Chloe's father, Axel, a veteran homicide detective in Black Harbor's police department, angrily charges into the probe of his daughter's disappearance. The investigation takes a deeply unsettling turn when it appears that Chloe was being bullied by Madison and may have had an affair with her drama teacher, Mark Cutler, who's also gone AWOL. Both parents are left to reflect on the recent changes in Chloe's personality they've mostly ignored. A second teen victim raises the specter of a serial killer. The deeper Rowan and Axel dig, the more creepy characters they unearth on their way to a grisly solution. While the core crime thriller packs a chilling wallop, the anxiety and soul-searching of the parents lacks both depth and verisimilitude, comporting uneasily with the serial killer's extreme violence. Familiar tropes folded into a visceral thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
