May 27, 2024
Chavez (Before She Finds Me) blends simmering suspense and domestic drama in this slow-burning thriller. Sixteen years ago, when waitress Leyna Clarke was 12, her 16-year-old sister, Grace, disappeared from their home with her boyfriend, Adam Duran. The mothers of the missing pair blamed one another, and soon launched into a feud that took over their lives. Leyna ditched that toxic atmosphere for Reno, while continuing to hold out hope that she’d eventually find Grace alive. One sweltering July afternoon, a woman who looks like Grace walks into the café where Leyna works. When a stunned Leyna starts asking her questions, the woman flees; a few days later, Adam’s brother, Dominic, calls Leyna to say a stranger has been poking around their old neighborhood, asking questions about Grace and Adam. Leyna returns home to investigate, reuniting with her mother, Meredith, and encountering Adam and Dominic’s mother, Olivia, who still blames Leyna’s family for the disappearance. As a dangerous forest fire crackles nearby, Leyna uncovers family secrets that shed new light on what happened to her sister. Chavez keeps the pace slack, building perhaps a touch too sluggishly to a resolution that nevertheless satisfies. Patient readers will be rewarded. Agent: Peter Steinberg, UTA.
Starred review from June 1, 2024
Another fast-paced and gripping thriller from Chavez (following Before She Finds Me, 2023), told in the voices of three women, each with her own secrets. "The Fire," the ever-gaining menace, also speaks. The wildfire begins when lightning strikes a pine tree just north of the Ridgepoint Ranch subdivision in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Ridgepoint is home to two families enduring an ongoing tragedy that began 16 years earlier when a teenage girl and boy disappeared. The two were dating, and speculation raged that they had run away together, but it was also rumored that they were dead since no trace of them was ever found. When a stranger who looks like the missing girl shows up at the restaurant where her younger sister, Leyna, works, and then vanishes soon after, Leyna and the missing boy's brother, Dominic, return to their unhappy homes and ask some difficult questions. As the flames move toward them, animosities also flare, and things turn deadly. What really happened is revealed amidst the choking smoke, and it is as complicated as it is compelling. Readers will have to really pay close attention with this one, and resist the urge to jump ahead to find out just what is going on. A perfect beach read.
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