While this is not my normal genre, I did find myself immediately drawn in to the story and eager to keep reading.

The story being told in so many alternating points of view was slightly scary to begin with. I was afraid I would get too easily lost in whose thoughts and memories I was reading. I was delighted to find that this was not the case at all, in fact, I'm sure that it added to the intensity of the story being able to see what the children, the parents, the police were all thinking and going through during the whole ordeal. I also found myself enjoying the flashbacks to the histories of certain characters, sort of setting the stage for the kind of adults or older children they had become.

While the ending can not possibly be labeled as "happy," I was certainly pleased it was not worse. My heart broke for characters affected by the tragedies, I got sick to my stomach during parts, but in a story and situation like this one, it could have been so much worse.