If you've read some of my other posts, you'd know that I am a big fan of Elle Marr. Her stories are fascinating and the way her audiobooks are done makes the stories so engaging. This book lived up to those expectations. I especially love that each character has their own narrator, it really makes the story more engaging.
Following the stories of three different women, a story emerges piece by piece. One narrator, Olivia, is a 22-year-old graduate student (just like me) studying psychopaths due to her family's legacy of being psychopaths. Olivia is disconnected from her family which I definitely think is valid at worst some of them are murderers at best they're extreme narcissists. Olivia's avoidance of her family ends when a postcard comes in the mail telling her the Eriksen family (her family) is having a reunion. Eager to get more evidence for her dissertation, she decides to take herself and her fiance on the trip. The trip takes a turn for the worse on the first night when Olivia's cousin turns up dead in the lake. Immediately family members are suspicious and make guesses about who the murder could be.
Another narrator is an unidentified woman writing in her diary. She details falling in love with a man she calls Teddy. Everything is going well until suddenly it's not. His family is odd and he is very defensive of them. Her life becomes more and more entangled with his and eventually, she becomes pregnant with his child. She's excited to be a mother, but her child ends up not being exactly what she expected.
The last narrator is Birdie. Birdie is a true crime podcaster who focuses on the cases of people of color, whose stories are often neglected by the police and media. Based on a tip from an unknown source, Birdie begins investigating the disappearance of Li Ming Na who disappeared from a vacation with her boyfriend. Birdie decides to go to the source and begins going to places Li Ming Na was formerly. She eventually discovers that Li Ming Na was in a relationship with one of the members of the Eriksen family notorious for having a serial killer, patricide, and other less tasteful acts. She keeps digging deeper and eventually finds the place where Li Ming Na went missing.
The book is also split up into newspaper articles about members of the Eriksen family and the crimes they committed.
Slowly the story comes together. I was trying to figure out who the murderer was and what happened to Li Ming Na. There were multiple "twists" at the end that had me gasping. I was a little disappointed in the ending, but as a true crime lover, I am always more fascinated when the story is more gruesome (sorry I know that's horrible).
As far as content warnings go, there are a few, some of which are obvious. There's emotional abuse, murder, violence, violence against animals, sexual content, and more. Please keep this in mind before reading this book. Personally, I recommend listening to the audiobook if you like them. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope you will too.
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