by Ashley Winstead ★★★☆☆
"My story starts with a body, just not the one you might expect."
When Jane Sharp's father suddenly dies, it dislodges her from her foundation. She is shaken by his death and what seem like his intentional failures to prevent the heart attack that took his life too soon. When looking for something in which to ground herself and distract her from her loss, she stumbles into the world of true-crime aficionados and an entire community on Reddit. She wants to feel useful and spontaneously offers to help some experienced true-crime gurus solve a local murder case. When they succeeding in solving the crime, Jane's contributions earn her accolades and credibility within the group; they embrace her and their friendship and shared sense of purposes helps to fill the void in her life.
The meat of the book follows Jane and her new surrogate family as they collaborate on a set of murders in Delphine, Idaho. This is where things start to become off-putting. The Delphine Murders, as they are referred to, aren't just similar to 2022's well-publicized University of Idaho murders ; they are nearly identical. With that real-life murder trial still ongoing and justice yet to be served for the four victims, leveraging those events as the foundation for a novel, even if that novel is based in the world of true-crime, just felt distasteful. I don't know what the statute of limitations is on something like that—I didn't have an issue when last year's Bright Young Women used the Ted Bundy murders as a basis for the story—but this felt like it was significantly too soon. I can't imagine the families of those victims seeing the recent tragedy used as fodder for a fiction novel less than three years after the event. And so when I'd read a passage like the following after having that context, I couldn't help but turn up my nose:
"When it comes to stories like the one I've been holding—when it comes to mysteries like these, the kind they call crimes of the century—you want to savor it. You want as much color as you can get. Trust me, by the time we're through, you'll bleed color."
Setting that ill-conceived choice aside, there are some positive aspects. Author Ashley Winstead frequently drops enticing hints about what's to come throughout the book and does so effectively. She writes the book in the form of a tell-all, and suggests that Jane is disgraced and possibly guilty of a crime. "I'm going to tell you the whole sordid thing. That's the point of a tell-all, isn't it? Time to let all the skeletons out of the closet." Winstead also creates a bit of a sub-mystery in which Jane uses her newfound sleuthing skills to try to learn more about her father with mixed results; at times that portion shines, but it too often feels like an afterthought. The interplay between Jane and her Reddit pals is more compelling than not, and the actual unraveling of the mystery is above average. But the ties to those recent murders are what ultimately sinks this to a 3-star book for me. There was plenty of potential, but I feel dirty for enjoying parts of it.
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