Every Year He Comes For Them.

On one fateful night in 1992, the lives of two seventeen-year-olds are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, is arrested after he innocently tries to break up a fight but ends up nearly killing someone. Jules Delaney, high school royalty, survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer—a serial predator who strikes every May 1st in midwestern small towns.

A year later, Jules is struggling with trauma and guilt, tormented by one question: Why was I spared? Quinn is newly released from juvenile detention and returns home to fresh the unsolved murder of his mother.

Over the next decade, their lives are revisited on a single day each year—May 1st. As secrets unravel and the paths of Quinn and Jules collide, two mysteries edge closer to the truth. All the while, the May Day Killer is still out there—and the clock is racing toward another May 1st.

The Anniversary is an utterly compelling story of the hunt for a serial killer. But it’s also a heartfelt—and heartrending—novel about fate, innocence lost, and two souls who find that sometimes being broken is the only way for the light to get in.

I received an advance copy of the audiobook version of this title. All thoughts are my own.

I love a good serial killer book, and this one had a clever, inventive structure that grabbed me from the start. I had a great time with it, even though I felt that it lost a little steam at the very end.

The thing I want to talk about first is the format, because it’s what makes this book stand out. Every chapter takes place on May 1. The book starts on May 1, 1992, and then moves forward year by year, checking in on the same two characters on the same date again and again. The reason this works is the killer. He goes after women in the area around this one Midwestern town every year on that same date, and only on that date. By telling the story exclusively on those anniversaries, the dread keeps accumulating without ever burning out. It also gave the characters a chance to really grow and mature and it shows us how a single incident (and continued threat) continues to haunt them through the years.

In 1992, Quinn and Jules are both seventeen, and they each have a night that will mark them for the rest of their lives. Quinn is the kind of kid who never got the breaks, growing up on the rough side of town. He gets between two people fighting one night at a concert, things go wrong, and he nearly kills someone in the process. Jules has the opposite life. She’s popular and wealthy and most would think protected, until she becomes one of the very few people to walk away from one of the killer’s attacks. The next several years pull both of their lives apart. Jules is buried under survivor’s guilt and the question of why she lived when so many others didn’t. Quinn finishes his time in juvenile detention and comes back to a hometown still trying to figure out who killed his mother. Each May 1 we check in on them and watch what they’re carrying.

As the years pass, the killer is still out there. The case keeps cooling and reheating. Eventually the authorities close in, and they need help from the people who got away, and Jules and Quinn end up back in each other’s lives. As the hunt rushes to its conclusion, two mysteries that have been hovering over both of them for years finally start to converge.

The characters are fantastic. Watching Jules and Quinn grow and break and rebuild themselves across more than a decade made me care about both of them in a way I don’t always care in this kind of book. Finlay uses the time skips to do real character work. The seventeen-year-old we meet in 1992 is not the same person years later, and this gives the book real weight.

The mystery itself is good. I had an idea of who the killer might be fairly early on, and I was eventually right, but I enjoyed watching it play out anyway. My one real complaint is the ending. Toward the last stretch, the book started piling things on which–to me– tipped it past inventive and into a reveal that felt forced. I think a single landing punch and then out would have hit harder. (I can’t say much more without spoiling things.) The book had earned the impact, and the last forty or so pages kind of muffled it by trying to do too much. I would have preferred a more restrained ending.

I did an immersive read with this one, and Ari Fliakos and Brittany Pressley were both fantastic narrators. They each fully embodied their character, and their voices carry the time jumps in a way that made the years between chapters feel real. If you’re an audio person, I’d absolutely point you to it.

If you love a serial killer thriller with a clever structural hook and strong characters, this one is well worth your time. Just brace a little for that final stretch. Other than that, I had a really good time with it.

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