She Left: A Novel

I just finished She Left by Stacie Grey and here are my thoughts.

Amy Brewer walked out of the house party after some hazing from friends who made her feel like she didn't belong there. Angry, she walks away. Little does she know that with the hour all five of those friends will be dead. Her whole life was changed in that instance.

It became known as the Memorial Day massacre and it rocked their community to its core. Amy may have survived the night but the aftermath was just as bad.

One day, 20 years later, Amy is invited to a remote cliffside house by a journalist looking into what happened that night. The boy who was arrested for the crime committed suicide in jail. There is something missing from the story and Amy isn't the only person invited to the get together. 10 people all with connections to what happened that night and one of them knows more than they are letting on and they are not about to let their secret come out.

This was a super interesting and unique concept for a book and I felt drawn in right away. My biggest con with this book was all the POVs we got. I am just not a fan of that. I like to have a central character where I get all the information. I understand why it was necessary to do it, but it made it really hard to connect with a character and get really invested.
The first half of the book is a lot of story building and it is a slow build up but the second half of the book will bring you to the very best kind of crescendo. The atmosphere was there. You could feel the tangible underlying fear, anger and guilt that was rampant through the group. Everyone had secrets so you literally can blame anyone and the story would fit. It was cleverly done. I thought the ending was wild and it wrapped it well enough for my liking. The part I didn't understand was why would everyone go? You put something in the rear view mirror after 20 years and the killer was dead? Seems weird. I would have liked the rationale as to why all these people showed up.


Other than that I was really entertained.


4 stars


Thank you to @netgalley and @poisonedpenpress for my gifted copy