Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Fifteen years ago, Rachel Cunningham killed her parents. Or so she thought. Rachel was only 11 when she shot her mother, watched her father turn his rifle on himself in their remote hunting lodge on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and then was found catatonic after having disappeared into the deep woods for two weeks. Now 26, she’s been in and out of psychiatric institutions, unable to come to terms with her terrible deed. The world thinks her father killed her mother, then himself: Rachel confessed, but no one believed her. One day, Trevor, an aspiring journalist, sits down with Rachel so she can tell her story and hopefully clear her father’s name. Then she plans to take her own life. But when Rachel catches a glimpse of the police report that says there's no way she could have fired that rifle, she questions everything she thought she knew about that day, and the gaps in her memory take on an even more ominous hue. She checks herself out of the hospital, calls Trevor for a ride, and heads back to the lodge, where her older sister, Diana, and her aunt, Charlotte, have lived for years. Choosing to hide out in the lodge rather than reveal herself, Rachel searches for clues about her parents’ deaths and soon realizes that Diana, and their complicated relationship, may hold the key to everything. Interspersed with Rachel’s present-day narrative, her mother, Jenny, who was a wildlife biologist along with Rachel’s father, Peter, details the years leading up to her death and the distressing events that marked their otherwise idyllic existence. Dionne has her locale down pat: It doesn’t get much creepier than a huge lodge filled with taxidermic animals where cell signals are scarce and dangers lurk in the surrounding woods. The characters lack nuance, though, and Dionne tends to clearly telegraph upcoming plot twists. Further, the book’s true villain does everything short of mustache twirling, and it’s not quite clear if readers should take Rachel’s earnest claim that she can talk to animals seriously. In the end, it’s all just a bit too much. A melodramatic, ultimately disappointing endeavor. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Horror movie meets mystery in Dionne's second psychological thriller (following The Marsh King’s Daughter, 2017). The story is organized in two juxtaposed narratives, a standard feature these days for authors who thrive on head fakes. The first thread, titled “Now,” finds the heroine, Rachel, writing in the present. The second, titled “Then,” comprises a journal kept by Rachel's mother, who talks not only about Rachel, but also Rachel’s older, wicked sister, a congenital psychopath. At book’s start, Rachel, who has been in a psychiatric facility for 15 years since she allegedly shotgunned her mother to death, suddenly learns she was not responsible for that murder. The gradual revelations from the mother’s journal build tension as Rachel, in the present, goes to her home on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to discover the truth. This is where horror-movie conventions come into play, as Rachel makes decisions that put her more and more in danger. This is strong on the psychology of guilt and great at creating the spooky, haunted-house landscape, but the absurd, horror-movie plot elements get in the way a bit.

Publishers Weekly
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Rachel Cunningham, the protagonist of this devastating, magic realism–dusted psychological thriller from Dionne (The Marsh King’s Daughter), has been guilt-ridden for 15 years since a twin tragedy she can’t remember—her mother’s murder and father’s apparent suicide—when she was 11 at her family’s vast wilderness estate on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She has voluntarily confined herself to a decaying mental institution, where one day she gains access to the original police report, obtained somehow by a fellow patient’s brother, that sparks the faint hope she’s not responsible for her parents’ deaths—and sends her back to the family estate, where her brilliant but scary older sister, Diana, and their aunt still live, to try to figure out what really happened. But Rachel’s mission soon becomes far more perilous than she anticipated. Arriving unannounced at a time when both women are away, she discovers paperwork indicating that Diana is up to no good. As Rachel scrambles to remain undetected, the tension at times becomes almost unbearable, especially as the reader becomes privy to critical information unknown to Rachel via flashbacks narrated by her late mother. Dionne paints a haunting portrait of a family hurtling toward the tragic destiny they can foresee but are powerless to stop. Agent: Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management. (Aug.)