A pulse-pounding new Southern thriller from the author of the runaway bestseller A Flicker in the Dark.

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist… until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire. A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time. However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard’s owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary’s contents… as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister’s disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.

Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.

I received an advance galley of this book courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

This is only the second book I’ve read by Willingham, even though I have all of her others sitting on my shelf. Last year I read “Only If You’re Lucky” and loved it. The sharp writing, layered characters, and the twist I genuinely didn’t see coming kept me hooked. So, I came into this one expecting that same spark. Unfortunately, the overall story never quite lit the match. It’s not bad, it just didn’t grab me like her last book did.

The premise is strong, if not a little familiar: Claire, an investigative journalist, returns to her small South Carolina hometown more than two decades after her sister vanished. She takes a seasonal job at a vineyard, stumbles across a found diary, and starts unraveling threads that might tie to her sister’s disappearance. It’s got all the right mystery elements on paper: small-town secrets, family tension, a personal stake in the investigation. But once I got into the story, I realized it wasn’t going to deliver the tension or surprise I was hoping for. It felt a little too cookie-cutter.

The “found journal” trope can be a great storytelling device, but here it felt flat. The diary’s contents should have been chilling or at least unsettling, but they lacked urgency. I never felt that “oh no, what’s going to happen next?” pull that keeps me flipping pages. There was a lot of setup, but not much payoff. The revelations were predictable, and I never got that jolt of discovery or the satisfying shock of a well-executed twist.

Claire herself is a fine protagonist, but she didn’t stick with me the way I wanted her to. She’s competent and observant, but there’s a sameness to her reactions. I wanted more emotional depth, more flaws that complicated the story, something to make her feel less like a stand-in for “The Main Character” and more like a real person in a messy, high-stakes situation.

This is a relatively short book and a quick read, yet it somehow dragged. Maybe that’s because there were no real surprises. Scenes drifted without building momentum, and by the time big reveals came around, I was already at the end of the destination waiting for the characters to catch up.

The one element that did elevate my experience was the audiobook. I listened to this one while reading. It’s narrated by Helen Laser and Karissa Vacker, and both gave strong performances. They brought warmth and texture to the characters, and their delivery kept me engaged in moments where the text alone might not have. If you’re going to pick up this book, I’d say the audio version is worth considering for that reason alone.

To be clear, this isn’t a bad book. It’s well-written and easy to follow, it just felt like it was afraid to take any risks. If you’re in the mood for something light on intensity but with a hint of mystery, it could be the right fit for a lazy afternoon read. But if you’re looking for the tightly wound suspense and clever plotting that Willingham has delivered before, this one might feel a little too by-the-numbers.

This is a decent, low-stakes mystery with a nice setting and strong audiobook narration, but it lacked the punch I’ve come to expect from this author. I still plan to read her other books, especially since I know she can pull off a knockout story, but for me, this one didn’t quite hit the mark.

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