cw: child abuse, r*pe, gay panic, cults
This book had a lot going on and most of it didn't work for me. I was surprised by one part of the mystery, but otherwise felt like it was lacking in those moments. Instead, the horrors the children in the story experienced were presented in a very matter-of-fact tone, while in the present day every time I got a little on the edge of my seat for the characters, the book quickly reassured me they were fine. From the start I was sad to find out this was another "surprise - you got a big inheritance!" book that has been the center of so many thrillers, but I had heard good things, so I pressed on. The cult angle was interesting, but ultimately kind of dropped.
I also had an issue with the handling of the three children as adults. There's a sort of deification post-trauma of one character, vilification of another, and dismissal of the third, and the main source of a lot of information on one of the characters comes from an unreliable and dangerous gay man.
Finally: the whole premise of this book falls apart when one of the children from the house is so easily found years later. The police wouldn't have believed the story we get from the start, and the estate certainly wouldn't have been turned over so easily.