” You know, a town gets set in its ways. When things are mostly working okay, it just goes humming along. People turn a blind eye to the parts that don’t work so well.”
When estranged twins Cassie and Ana begin to clean up their late mother’s home after her funeral, they find a manuscript written by their mother’s best friend and discover a shocking story about an unsolved murder and the dark secrets hidden in the small, rural Connecticut town known locally as Grabtown.
A mystery thriller told in dual timelines. The present-day timeline is focused on Cassie, her troubled past and her current marriage to her charming but dominating husband, while the other timeline is the 40-year-old manuscript detailing the truth about events Cassie and Ana never knew their mother experienced.
I enjoyed the book-within-a-book format of this one. The story deals with very heavy themes like broken families, child abuse and trafficking, but does so in a tasteful way with no explicit, graphic scenes and deep empathy and just rage at a society that excuses the perpetrators and shames and punishes victims of sexual assault and grooming. Both storylines are tense and fast-paced and nothing is guaranteed as Cassie and Ana slowly realise that the dangers of the past are nothing compared to the threats the two of them will have to face in the present.
Recommended for readers who enjoy psychological thrillers, book-within-a-book plots, dual timeline mysteries and flawed main characters.
Many thanks to Sarah P. Blanchard for the review copy of this thriller. I received a copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Psychological thriller – Mystery thriller
Mostly Murders 
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