I do not do well with twists. Let me explain. It does not matter if it is a M. Night Shyamalan level twist or the most obvious of true crime twists (It’s the husband. It is always the husband), I always enjoy it. I just get so swept up in the story itself that trying to figure out the twist is almost never on my radar.

So when I say that I gasped out loud and ran in to tell my man the twist, starting from the very beginning to tell him the entire plot after he got home from a sixteen hour shift, know that this is not unusual. Just more evidence that man is a saint.

The entire book felt reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird. A young girl/woman in a small Southern town gets caught up in a trial. Most of the town sucks, and you want a Batman-esque hero to punch them all in the face. The defendant in the trial is sympathetic, and you hope beyond all hope that the jury in this terrible town will make the right decision.

The stories are ultimately very different. The age differences in the main character affects the content. This book has romantic subplots that are largely absent in Harper Lee’s works. A longer time period is covered which affects the pacing.

What Delia Owens has managed to do though is something that a lot of books try but don’t actually succeed. A book that you wish you could read again with fresh eyes but that also reveals its secrets with subsequent rereads.

Not to mention that this is a book that I could actually recommend to my mother.

See the link below to read it for yourself!