I Did It For You by Amy Engel
A twisty thriller from the beloved author of The Familiar Dark, in which a woman returns to the town where her sister was murdered and finds a presumed copycat on the loose
It’s been fourteen years since Greer Dunning’s older sister, Eliza, was murdered, and Greer’s family has never been the same. And now there’s been a similar killing in Greer’s small Kansas hometown, Ludlow, after the execution of the convicted killer. A copycat, according to the authorities, but Greer is convinced there is more to the story. That Eliza’s murderer had help all those years ago.
So Greer returns to Ludlow after more than a decade away, desperate to find answers to the questions that have haunted her for years. Her drive to uncover the truth pushes her to form a bond with the unlikeliest of allies.
At once a riveting mystery and a deep exploration of guilt, loss, and the ways in which a violent murder transforms both the family of the victim and the family of the killer, I Did It For You will keep readers captivated through the very last page.
Review:
I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Until recently, a friend and I had a weekly true crime podcast. We did it for almost three years – it was pretty successful, but then it ended up really wearing on us. Reading about murders and disappearances and the effects it had on the families really took a toll. While I’m happy to be away from true crime, I love reading about fictional crime and as soon as I read the synopsis for this one on NetGalley, I knew I wanted to give it a shot. While I liked the book, I didn’t love it – mostly because I felt the revelation was a little “meh”.
When we hear the words true crime, we tend to think of serial killers – or at least that’s where my mind goes. I think maybe it’s just that I am an 80s kid raised on threats of being kidnapped and ending up on a milk carton, and/or being murdered by a serial killer. What I learned while doing the podcast is statistically we’re more likely to be murdered by someone we know than by a stranger – let that sink in. Our next most likely murderer would be a stranger who wasn’t out simply to kill us for fun, but more likely because of an altercation, robbery or in connection with some other crime.
All that to say, I really liked how the plot in this book was contained to a single crime that rocked a small Kansas town. Police caught the guy who did it – in fact he even confessed to doing it. He was sentenced and eventually executed, so when two more teenagers are murdered in the same way 14 years later, Greer Dunning returns home to find out what is going on. Her sister Eliza was one of the victims fourteen years ago and Greer has always felt as though there was more to the story. She’s had this nagging feeling that the killer wasn’t working alone, so she leaves her job as a school counselor in Ohio and returns home to poke around.
Greer has a difficult relationship with her parents. After Eliza’s death they all grew apart and things are still strained between them. Upon returning home, she immediately reconnects with her childhood BFFs Ryan and Cassie and it’s not long before she also connects with Dean Matthews – the brother of Roy Matthews who was convicted of murdering her sister and her sister’s boyfriend all those years ago. She figures Dean is her only hope in figuring out what was going on with Roy before he murdered her sister, and this information could help her figure out who Roy may have been working.
The author does a great job of creating the small town vibe. I also really liked the character of Greer and the complex relationships she had not only with her family, but also with several people from her past – including Cassie and Ryan.
The book is a good read and unravels much like a classic true crime case, but it lost me toward the end when we find out how the murders were connected and why they occurred. It was way too much of a stretch for me to fully get behind.
