When I tell you this book will build your empathy as much as it did your righteous anger, I mean this in the darkest way. The author says this book is about the commodification of suffering, and this is a sweeping theme across the novel and the years. This book sucked me in so thoroughly and absolutely gutted me from the beginning. The writing style is like Allie Larkin (The People We Keep, Home of the American Circus) along with a murder mystery and along with disturbing subject matter.
The book follows Birdie, a victim of sexual abuse, as she flees to Whidbey, a remote island off the Washington coast. In alternating chapters, we read the POV of Mary Beth, the mother of the convicted pedophile Calvin Boyer. I think I found Mary Beth’s chapters the most heartbreaking. She somehow has to grieve her son, while making sense of his lifetime as an abuser. In act two, Linzie’s POV is added as well, one of Calvin’s later victims who wrote a memoir about her experiences and ended up on a reality show similar to The Bachelor.
It is truly haunting that the author manages to make Calvin a tragic empathetic character, considering she is a survivor of sexual abuse from a young age.
If you are in the mood for something extremely engaging and deep, I know this book will be one people are talking about.
Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the ARC. Book to be published March 9, 2025.
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