This flew by. Read it in one sitting. In some ways, I’ve read similar stories. The disappearance of a young girl shakes a town. But contextualized through the lens of an older man reflecting on that time, and his personal trial and examination of his brother, in particular, makes this far more of interesting than the tropes present.

Highly relatable, too, is that every character seems raw and real and broken; lending a complexity to each that would almost certainly have rendered the ultimate conclusion of the mystery toothless and maybe even problematic, had the author not done that work throughout.

Simple prose done very well. No stand-out specificity in the diction, but excellent, believable dialogue and reactions from characters drives the drama engine. As mentioned, highly consumable. Almost addictively consumable. Great stuff.