Title: Don’t Forget Me
Author: Rea Frey
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Pages: 269
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Ruby night, formerly Winslow, is grappling
with the mysterious disappearance of her 17-year-old daughter, Lily, and the abandonment
of her husband, Tom, when she comes across a partially decomposed body in the
lake one morning. Everyone in the neighbourhood believes that it is Tom’s body
that has been found, but Ruby doesn’t think so.
Detective Ellis suspects Ruby of the crime. As
an abused wife, she had the motive to kill her husband.
Then Cassie, a neighbour, is found dead, and
Ryan, another guy from the community, a day later, both killed the same way as
Tom.
Ruby joins a group known as the Murderlings,
that solve cold cases for fun. Now she turns to the group for an answer to who
might be the real killer.
Meanwhile, Ruby’s own secrets are messing with
her mental health. She’s losing chunks of time and repressing painful memories.
Detective Ellis is convinced that the killings have some link to Ruby.
The book is written in the first person past
tense PoV of Ruby in two timelines, Then and Now. The narrative is interspersed
with messages from the neighbourhood forum, which give us an idea about the
pulse of the community.
I guessed the identity of the killer around
the 70 percent mark.
The police were rather inept. Aside from
suspecting Ruby, there was no evidence of any method in the investigation.
Despite suspecting Ruby of the murders, she is allowed to go home. Nor does anyone
tell her not to leave town.
The forum provided comic relief and an unwelcome
distraction that added nothing to the place or the plot.
The timeline was rather confusing. The Then timeline
consisted of two different periods: Before Lily disappeared and Tom left, and
Ruby’s own childhood. Particularly in the period before Lily disappeared, there
were some comings and goings with reference to Lily and Tom that I found hard
to keep straight.
Overall, the premise was good but the execution
needed further polish. The pace was off and the writing loose.
(I read this book on NetGalley.
Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)
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