Author: Lucinda Berry
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Pages: 281
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Prologue
begins with the first person present tense PoV of Kendra and her husband, Paul,
as they become aware that something terrible has happened at the home of Caleb,
where their own son, Sawyer, has gone for a sleepover along with another
friend, Jacob. The night ends in tragedy and horror, and none of the families
are ever the same again.
The boys get drunk
and begin to play around with the gun owned by Caleb’s dad, Bryan.
Sawyer dies on the
spot, Jacob has to be rushed to the hospital, in a vegetative state, with a
bullet in his brain, while Caleb has turned silent, too traumatised by the
events of the night to even speak. He has taken to screaming, having nightmares
and wetting his bed.
Doctors think that
Jacob’s wound is self-inflicted and that he may have shot Sawyer. Detective
Martin Locke is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. As he struggles
with the investigation, Kendra feels driven to make her own investigations to
find out what happened that night.
Prior to this, the
families have socialised together. But tragedy draws invisible lines between
them, even though on the surface, it seems that the friendship is unmarked. Soon
other secrets simmer to the surface, secrets that let up to the tragedy that
bound their families together. The secrets range from the abuse of drugs and
peddling them, to violence and cruelty in a marriage and even an emotional affair
that threatens to upend a marriage. Even the boys, it turns out, weren’t as
innocent as their parents supposed.
As the secrets pop
out, the face of a picture perfect life begins to crumble and the parents’
lives begin to disintegrate. Soon each woman finds herself facing overwhelming
reality, as they realise the extent of the secrets they have all hidden.
The book is
written in multiple first person present tense points of view of Kendra, Lindsey
and Dani. The voices sound alike in the language and tone. It’s only the events
taking place in each life that helps to distinguish between the characters.
The best friends
in the title refers not only to Caleb, Sawyer and Jacob, who have been
inseparable since grade school, but also to their mothers, Dani, Kendra and
Lindsey, who have also been best friends since they were very little.
I could relate to
Kendra’s sense of fear as she worries about her son and rushes out to the home
of Caleb, after she hears not one but two gunshots in rapid succession. Stunned
and shocked by her son’s death, Kendra gives way to grief.
The writing is prosaic.
The chapters end abruptly, without a cliff-hanger or even a sense of closure to
them.
I didn’t get a sense
of how old the boys were until Chapter 3. I assumed that as they were having a
sleepover, they were much younger. They turned out to be teenagers, at
least 16 years of age.
It was hard to
keep the families straight initially. Which husband was married to which wife,
and who their kids were.
I found one inconsistency.
In the Prologue, from Kendra’s PoV, we learn that Paul has blond hair. In
Chapter 15, Dani’s PoV tells us that it is light brown, matching his perfectly
tanned skin.
The book ends with
a revelation on the very last word of the last chapter. There are very few
books I have read that could make that claim.
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