I’ve had a lot of trouble focusing on reading as of late. It could be the stress of the quarantine, or the fact that I’m never really alone (because of the quarantine), or it could be the new puppy we’ve had for the last month. I’m guessing it’s a little bit of everything.
But this weekend, between the jogs and walks and cooking and (ahem) wine, I decided I was going to buckle down and get some books read!! My goal is to finish three.
Which might happen, except I also have three books to review now before I can finish that third. Why do we do these things to ourselves? I love to read, and love to review the books so that I can remember them and have some type of journal to look back on (also so I don’t read the same book again!). But feeling pressure to read the books? I guess a little silly.
My TBR list right now is about 20 books deep though!! So, on to the review so I can get back to the reading.
From the Publisher:
Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.”
Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and held vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye.
Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. She’s managed to stay off the radar for the last few years. But with the twentieth anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Where is she now? Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.
And now, the girl from Widow Hills is about to become the center of the story, once again, in this propulsive page-turner from suspense master Megan Miranda.
My Review:
The Girl from Widow Hills started strong. What a premise! Girl goes missing as a child while sleep-walking, girl starts new life, old life comes to find her. I truly do believe that people can change, but we can never truly overcome our past.
And that’s the life that Olivia is living. On the surface, she’s successful enough. She’s carved out a life for herself in a small town, working as an administrator at the town’s claim to fame- and main employer, a mid-sized hospital. She’s even bought herself an old farm house on a huge lot.
But there’s a lot missing and there’s trouble in her life. Like the fact that she has been estranged from her mother for years, and just found out she recently passed. That she has recently broken up with a boy toy- because he never took her seriously enough to call her a girlfriend, and that she probably isn’t hugely capable of having a true relationship. Oh, and the fact that she tripped over a body in her front yard while sleep-walking. Oops!
All-in-all, it was a good enough plot, but for me the story unfolded very slowly and it was hard for me to truly get into. If I really had to nitpick, it also wasn’t my absolute favorite type of ending, where out of nowhere, everything gets tied up nicely with a bow and I’m left wondering why the narrator hadn’t seen any of that coming from a mile away.
Special thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one is out June 23, 2020. Get your copy (from your favorite independent, support local!)
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