Courtney Gray’s peaceful vacation turns into a nightmare when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law dead in their lakeside cottage. Her niece Reese is missing. Her nephew Wyatt is asleep upstairs—unharmed.
A town full of secrets…
As police swarm the quiet resort, dark truths about Courtney’s family—and the town itself—begin to surface. Is Reese a victim… or the killer?
A truth no one saw coming…
With everyone hiding something, Courtney races to uncover the terrible mystery. But the closer she gets, the harder it is to know who—or what—to trust.
Courtney Gray is spending a week at a lakeside resort with her husband, daughter and her brother’s family. One night everything falls apart, with the morning revealing a horrific chain of events having taken place. Her brother and sister-in-law are dead, their teenage daughter Reese is missing and the teen son Wyatt somehow slept through the whole thing.
The story moves between two voices. Courtney is the first, which I struggled with. Then there is Reese's chapters, it tells of the days since arriving, leading up to that fateful night. There were times I found this story long winded, especially the opening chapters. Reese's talks about being seventeen, lonely and making questionable decisions for a bit of excitement.
What I wasn’t quite ready for was just how dysfunctional this family really was. Behind the cozy cottage vacation there’s resentment, secrets and the drama gets heavy at times. That made for a lot of suspects, I changed my mind more than once. But it also meant I honestly couldn’t find a single character I liked. Everyone was hiding something or behaving badly, with no one to root for I felt a little more distant from the story than I wanted to be.
Then there’s the ending. I won’t say a word about it, except that I did not see it coming at all. Just when I thought everything had been wrapped up, Kubica pulled the rug out one more time, it was easily the best part of the book for me. It’s the kind of twist that had me wanting to flip back through earlier chapters to see what I missed.
Not quite Local Woman Missing territory for me, the twist won it for me.
This book is part of my 2026 Reading Off My Shelf Challenge - #33
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