Thank you Harper Perennial, #partner, for the advanced copy of Dark August in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: June 30, 2020
Summary:
An electrifying, page-turning debut about a young woman haunted by her tragic past, who returns to her hometown and discovers that there might be more to her police detective mother’s death–and last case–than she ever could have imagined.
Augusta (Gus) Monet is living an aimless existence with her grifter boyfriend when she learns that her great grandmother–her last living relative–has just died. Ditching her boyfriend, Gus returns to the home she left as a young girl. Her inheritance turns out to be a dilapidated house and an old dog named Levi. While combing through her great grandmother’s possessions, Gus stumbles across an old trunk filled with long-lost childhood belongings. But that’s not all the trunk contains. She also discovers cold case files that belonged to her mother, a disgraced police detective who died in a car accident when Gus was eight. Gus remembers her mother obsessing over these very same documents and photographs, especially a Polaroid of a young ballerina.
When Gus spots a front-page news story about the unearthing of a body linked to one of the cold case files from her childhood trunk, she can’t resist following her mother’s clues. As she digs deeper, determined to finish her mother’s investigation, her search leads her to a deserted ghost town, which was left abandoned when the residents fled after a horrific fire. As Gus’ obsession with the case grows, she inadvertently stirs up the evils of the past, putting her life in danger. But Gus is undeterred and is committed to uncovering long-buried secrets, including the secrets surrounding a missing geology student, the young ballerina in the Polaroid, a prominent family’s devastating legacy, and a toxic blast that blew an entire town off the map.
But is Gus ready to learn the truths that culminated on one terrible August night, more than a decade earlier, when lives were taken, and secrets were presumed buried forever…?
Dark August introduces a bold new voice and will leave readers guessing until the final startling conclusion.
My thoughts:
I love discovering new-to-me authors and when it’s their debut book and the start of a series, even better! I’m glad I finally got to this one and am excited that I have her next book already waiting for me on my shelf.
I love small town thrillers and cold-cases are my favorite trope, so when I saw that was involved, I knew I was in for a treat with this one. Right away I was pulled into this one and found myself completely invested in Augusta/Gus’s story, who returns home after her grandmother passes away and she finds out she has inherited not only an old house but also an old dog named Levi, along with some secrets that were buried in the house pertaining to her mother, who died when Gus was young.
This book really kept me on my toes and I loved how not only do we see Gus trying to find out answers about her mom’s death from so many years ago that were never really answered, but we also learn more about Gus herself. There were just enough twists and turns to keep things interesting and while it gets off to a slow start, it does pick up pace halfway through, not stopping until the end with quite a surprising ending.
I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for Gus and as I already mentioned, I have the next book, Poison Lillies, sitting on my shelf, so as soon as I find the time I will be reading it!
