Cassie McDowell's life in 1980s Minnesota seems perfectly wholesome. She lives on a farm, loves school, and has a crush on the nicest boy in class. Yes, there are her parents' strange parties and their parade of deviant guests, but she's grown accustomed to them.
All that changes when someone comes hunting in Lilydale.
One by one, local boys go missing. One by one, they return changed-violent, moody, and withdrawn. What happened to them becomes the stuff of shocking rumours. The accusations of whose responsible grow just as wild, and dangerous town secrets start to surface. Then Cassie's own sister undergoes the dark change. If she is to survive, Cassie must find her way in an adult world where every sin is justified, and only the truth is unforgivable.
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[The lonely-scream smell of that dirt basement lived inside me]***
(Thomas & Mercer, 1 January 2020, 300 pages, ebook, bought from @AmazonKindle via Amazon First Reads)
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This book is not exactly what I expected. This is a good thing. I liked Cassie as a character; the book is narrated by her. She's 12-years-old and the narrative while working well does become a bit childish at times as if Cassie is younger. This doesn't happen all the time so I found the narrative a bit uneven at times. The book is supposed to be based on a true story from the town the author grew up in. I'd love to know the real story. I'd never read the author before and enjoyed this so much I'll probably check out her other books. At times, having 12-year-old Cassie as a narrator doesn't work as the book skirts around the more serious aspects of the plot such as incest and sex parties that take place in Cassie's house. Cassie's father is a creep. I thought the ending could have been better but it works somehow.
