Hannah is living a happy married life attempting to ingratiate herself to her new-ish husband’s teen daughter, Bailey, making decent money selling custom furniture, and spending what time she can with her husband, Owen; a man she thinks she knows pretty well, until he completely disappears. What follows is Hannah retracing what she does know about her husband, tugging on threads that unravel a past that flip flops between revealing Owen as “good” and “bad”.

This was alright. It’s popcorn commercial fiction that keeps the pages turning and has a somewhat interesting setup. I thought Hannah and Bailey were believable characters and against type. They’re competent and non-melodramatic. The story ends up being less contrived than I’d expected. Hannah, in particular, I found to be written as particularly observant and her thoughts were interesting.

But for much of it the hook barely kept me coming. If the pacing wasn’t as frenetic and the characterization of Hannah’s interactions weren’t in use via new characters constantly entering and exiting as the duo hop about in Owen’s past, I doubt I’d have kept going. I’m not sure exactly why, but the semi subversion of the genre conventions being Hannah choosing, ultimately, what is best for herself and Bailey, felt fairly toothless to me.

Maybe because emotion overall is something that felt lacking. And at a meta level, I liked that they weren’t characterized typically, but the narrative seemed unable provide something interesting in lieu of tropes.

Owen’s past, too, simply isn’t that interesting. The mystery itself continues to be the carrot, rather than the clues they eventually accrue.

As a result, as I said, this ended up being somewhat interesting, which bumped it up to 3 stars, because I liked it… But also something that didn’t make much of an impact on me.