Someone Knows

NYC English professor Elizabeth Davis left her alcoholic mother and her troubled small-town Louisiana past behind twenty years ago. She’s also tried to push away the memories of how far she went one night to help her friend Jocelyn escape an abuser. The booze and casual hook-ups haven’t erased the memories of his death.

Imagine her shock when a student in her large writing class submits her first chapter assignment online and it perfectly details the beginning of Jocelyn’s experience with that abuser, down to the exact names of those involved. In such a huge class, she doesn’t know who this writer is, but she does know one thing: she knows how this story ends. Do they?

As each new emailed chapter comes in with details getting closer to revealing Elizabeth’s crime,  she becomes more desperate and paranoid to uncover who knows her secret and what they want from her. This will take her back to Louisiana and a past she’s tried so desperately to escape and into the arms of someone very unexpected!

So, straight off the bat. The instigator for this story’s premise is an abusive student-teacher relationship. For those of you who read or know the book, think My Dark Vanessa if it was turned into a psychological thriller with an even more abusive power dynamic. The blurb calls it an “affair”, which even the book itself calls out. It’s not an affair when a teacher uses their power to abuse a student, but I’ll get off my soapbox.

Despite the dark premise, I did enjoy Keeland’s latest thriller. This isn’t just your average unreliable, sexaholic FMC making repeated foolish decisions, though I won’t say that there aren’t some of those. There’s some depth to this one regarding the long-term effects of these types of abusive relationships on the victims and how their troubled homes often set them up to be victimized. It’s not heavy-handed … just enough to let you know the book isn’t simply gratuitous entertainment for its own sake.

I know the blurb looks straightforward and like one you’ve heard hundreds of times - those were my thoughts too, but it isn't as simple as it looks. I was genuinely surprised by a very unexpected twist that came close to halfway through that changed the rest of the story. I was flipping pages the whole book, anxious to see where it would lead!

I liked Keeland’s first thriller The Unraveling last year. Personally, I think this one is even better. She stays true to some of the erotic elements she gravitates towards which I don’t love, but I thought it was tamed down and more tolerable or at least understandable in this one. She kept me guessing to the very end and finished things off in a way that I both loved and hated at the same time! I’ll leave you readers to figure out how both can be true. ;)

Keeland is showing she has the chops to write great psychological thrillers and I’ll be in line for her next!

★★★★ ½ 

Thanks to Atria/Emily Bestler Books, NetGalley and author Vi Keeland for this digital ARC to honestly review. It’s out now.