Let’s get back to some fiction and back to the long list of books I have randomly bookmarked in the library! Today’s selection is a mystery thriller that had a podcast angle that I’m pretty sure I picked out because I was in a true crime phase.
The book mostly follows Anna, a babysitter in Herron Mills who bears a striking resemblance to a missing girl named Zoe Spanos. Though she is there to turn over a new leaf, her resemblance to Zoe is affecting her and everyone around her until the day they find her body and Anna confesses to the murder of this girl she has never met. At the same time, we follow Martina, a girl with a true crime podcast specifically about Zoe Spanos and her quest to find the truth on behalf of her best friend and Zoe’s younger sister.
I honestly would not categorize this as a mystery and would not recommend going in with the expectation of figuring out what happens before they reveal it. Clues aren’t left so much as they are revealed at the time of the twist that they cause. The truth of the cause of death and motive isn’t even revealed until the epilogue, so it will be very frustrating if you’re going in with the intent of solving it.
It is an interesting story, but I did find Anna’s memory and her spiraling moments where she is having memory issues to happen more in line with when the story needed it to happen as opposed to being an actual character trait. I also didn’t find that the podcast element really added anything to the story, though that may be more because I didn’t think the way that they showed a podcast in writing to be as engaging as an actual podcast and that it lost something in the translation.
Overall, though, it was an interesting read. I thought it was a fine read, not one I would go back to but one that I was entertained by while I was there.