Put yourself in Kyra’s place. You're seventeen years old, lost and alone in a remote town in Louisiana. You're searching for the birth parents you never knew. The heat is crippling. The river often floods, washing houses away and lifting corpses from the ground. The locals treat you with suspicion. You don't belong here. They're hiding something. All over town, in nooks and hidden alcoves, there’s evidence of a forbidden faith. They keep the old ways here, but no one will tell you what they are.
There's an intangible presence following you. Hiding in your peripheral vision. You can't see, hear, or touch it, but you know it's there, waiting for its chance to claim you. Then the episodes start. Your vision goes, and when it returns, you're seeing the world as it was fifteen years ago. Physically, you're in the present, but everything you see happened a decade and a half ago.
Suddenly, you realize. You’re seeing through the eyes of the serial killer who murdered your birth mother. He takes control of you, forcing you to watch as he stalks and brutally murders her. And there’s nothing you can do to stop him. Because he died by lethal injection more than a decade ago.
Overall, this was a really strong novel with a lot to like about it. The multiple storylines and different time periods that go into the central story here, featuring the developed storyline about the main girl’s obsession with true crime and how she becomes obsessed with the concept of the killer targeting the town in the past, set up a fantastic character arc over the course of the book. By the time it starts to evolve into a series of adventures involving her being transported into the past and observing the events through the eyes of another victim being involved in the crime spree of a serial killer, there’s a lot of intrigue with the crazy scenario given a little bit of leeway into how much empathy develops for the characters. With the atmosphere of the situation touching heavily on the Southern Gothic style, influenced heavily by the massively entertaining setting in the heart of Louisiana, the approach here is impressive and highly likable as we get further into the story.
The more this explores the idea of tempting fate and altering the past as she becomes invested in the mind of the serial killer, this changes style somewhat into being more of a paranormal situation than the true-crime fascination that had been utilized. While still keeping focus on dealing with the killer and his rampage through the town, this offers up the kind of shocking revelations involving who she is and how everything in town connects together, accomplished through a fascinating exploration of voodoo rites and rituals that are utilized frequently throughout here. The intricate nature of what’s covered here ties together quite nicely, especially with what those revelations imply, which all creates a remarkably fun style here, as there’s only the issue about its length that tends to bring it down. The writing is fine, and the imagery is quite detailed, but there are a lot of moments where the story has a lot to spell out, so it does get a bit hefty in the second half. As this is the only issue, though, it’s not even detrimental in the slightest.
5/5
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