Catching up on some reviews from the end of February!
Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the free copy in exchange for my honest review
GIRL AT THE EDGE – Karen Dietrich (Released March 3rd, 2020)
Book Description:
Not a single resident of St. Augustine, Florida, can forget the day that Michael Joshua Hayes walked into a shopping mall and walked out the mass murderer of eleven people.
He’s now spent over a decade on death row, and his daughter Evelyn – who doesn’t remember a time when her father wasn’t an infamous killer – is determined to unravel the mystery and understand what drove her father to shoot those innocent victims.
Evelyn’s search brings her to a support group for children of incarcerated parents, where a fierce friendship develops with another young woman named Clarisse. Soon the girls are inseparable, and by the beginning of the summer, Evelyn is poised at the edge of her future and must make a life-defining choice. Whether to believe that a parent’s legacy of violence is escapable or that history will simply keep repeating itself. Whether we choose it to or not.
My Thoughts: 4/5 stars
The synopsis for this book was definitely intriguing – our main character joins a support group for the children of incarcerated parents. Evelyn has been concerned that there is something dark inside her like there was in her father, so she is determined to try and figure out what drove her father to go into a shopping mall and shoot 11 people.
Evelyn meets Clarisse at this support group meetings and they become fast friends. They spend their summer together and decide that they could put each other through tests to see if they are like their fathers. Clarisse’s father is also an incarcerated killer and the two of them are worried that they could also end up with the same fate their fathers had.
The author covers the nature versus nurture debate and brings the readers on the journey with our characters as they try to come to terms with their family’s history. This is also part coming-of-age story for our teenage lead character. You really feel the struggle that Evelyn is experiencing as she continues in her research.
This isn’t a crazy thriller like I was kind of expecting, but it’s more of a slower building characters study. This was my introduction to Karen Dietrich and I loved her writing style – I will definitely keep an eye out for more from her in the future.
Jessicamap Reviews 