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Have you ever fallen hard for a book and you can’t put your finger on exactly why? It’s not an overall fan favorite, and the content isn’t anything to write home about, per se, but all you know is that you couldn’t put it down the entire time you were reading it, and once you finished it was difficult to move onto the next book because you couldn’t stop thinking about this one? That’s the only way I can describe my experience with Locust Lane. It’s your standard, run-of-the-mill crime fiction murder mystery, and yet it kind of isn’t.

Maybe it was the gripping prologue. Perhaps it was the fact that, even though the story is about a group of teens who are suspects in a murder investigation, it’s the adults belonging to these teens that we get all of the POVs from. It could even be the fact that, as I age, I have a greater appreciation for a thoroughly constructed, character driven novel of slow burning suspense than I do for the flashy, OMG A TWIST YOU WON’T SEE COMING type of novel. *although let’s be honest, we almost always see the twist coming a mile away, amiright? Whatever the reason, this one will stay with me along my reading journey forward.

The story begins with a gripping prologue with a driver hitting a dog (don’t worry, the dog is totally fine), and ends with an ominous stand off. After that, we kind of hit reverse on the pacing and gently ease into introductions of the characters telling this story. The murder really doesn’t become the main focus of the book until the second half of the book, so the first half is spent on revealing many juicy secrets that each family is hiding. Once I got past the 50% mark, the pages practically turned themselves and I couldn’t race to the end quickly enough to see how it all wrapped up. Speaking of, I was wrong about who the killer was. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense, but I was so sure that the author was trying to make me think it wasn’t one particular character, that I went all in in my guess, and I was pleasantly bamboozled. The ending was superb; plenty of closure but also a little door left open to let us wonder how the next phase might be handled.

Big thanks if you made it this far, and I hesitate to recommend this book to just anyone, because it will definitely require a patient and special reader to enjoy it, but if you enjoy slow burning novels of suspense with juicy, wealthy people’s secrets and deep character studies, give this one a try.

*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.