Warning: you will not want to read this book if you like things all tied up neat and tidy at the end, because this book does not have that ending… although it might, depending on which of the three main characters you decide to root for.
We start in the POV of a man waking up naked and injured on a beach in Maryland, with no memory at all. Not even the knowledge of his own name. Tiny flashes of memory lead him to hitch a ride to Maine, where he just happens to end up in his old hometown when he bails out, just minutes from where his sister lives. Finding out his name is Ash, he slowly sets about trying to piece together his past.
Lily is the girl he left behind, the girl who was in love with ‘Jack’... and has no idea why he would be using a fake name. Trying to figure out where he would have gone, she follows the trail to Maine.
Maya is the loving stepsister who’s been searching for her brother for two years, after Ash just up and left. Now he’s back, but he doesn’t remember her. Doesn’t remember anything. Which might not be such a bad thing, actually…
Spending time in the POV of all three, the secrets of all of them are slowly revealed as Ash starts trying to piece together who he is and why he was living in Maryland as ‘Jack’. And slowly, it becomes clear that while all three of them have shadows in their past, one of them is in fact a malignant narcissist, a sociopath who’s killed before… and won’t hesitate to kill again to clear their path to the future they want. It started to become clear fairly early on who the villain was, but I must admit I absolutely did not see the ending coming. I was genuinely blown away when the final big confrontation went down, and by the aftermath of it. An absolutely masterful bit of writing by the author; the pieces were all in place but as a reader, you just don’t think it’s going to turn out that way. You think it’s all going to be neat and tidy and, holy wow. It was really, really not. I absolutely loved it, twisted as it was, and I’ll definitely be looking for more by this author. Five stars for a good read which did not turn out at all how I expected.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.