I enjoyed the build up in this novel, which is in the Gillian Flynn genre of dark, female-centered suspense. The narrative shifts between the protagonist Anna, an English professor, and the antagonist Julie, her long lost older daughter; it also shifts between the story’s present in Houston and the years leading up to Julie’s return.

After her daughter reappears on the family doorstep in her early 20s, Anna begins to wonder if this is really Julie. There are easy ways to determine that and it was a little surprising that the young woman is reintegrated into the family—father, mother, college-aged sister — without bureaucratic red tape. So much of Anna and Julie’s voices felt on track that I was willing to suspend disbelief. A side plot abt mega churches was intriguing as was Anna’s analytical response to events.

Then, in the final chapters, the author tosses in all the usual suspects, including a violent climax. For me, these chapters violated two key rules for believable psychological suspense- readers had access to a character’s mind who withheld key details to throw the reader off track; the writer relied on undiagnosed mental illness to explain the plot. That latter one moves any book down to 2 stars for me as I really hate the way writers cheat with the “oh, he/she/they is crazy,” and confuse mental illness with domestic abuse or domestic terrorism or child abuse or whatever the case may be.

In the final couple of chapters the writer tries to return to the organic conflicts and develop a more satisfying conclusion but eh.

Some of this was well written and I was so disappointed that it jumped down the rabbit hole of mental illness-as-plot-device.