Forget Me Not — ARC Book Review

A pulse-pounding new Southern thriller from the author of the runaway bestseller A Flicker in the Dark.

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist… until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire. A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time. However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard’s owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary’s contents… as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister’s disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.

Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.

Almost twenty years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister Natalie goes missing. However, there was a suspect in Natalie’s case named Jeffrey who was charged with Natalie’s disappearance and was sentenced to prison. Claire is now a journalist working in New York but returns back to her home town in South Carolina, where she is originally from. While going through Natalie’s stuff, Claire discovers a not developed film roll among Natalie’s belongings. Going through pictures in Natalie’s belongings lead her to visit Galloway Farm where Natalie supposedly worked. While in the farm, Claire meets Liam and also meets Mitchell the owner of the farm and his wife Marcia who looked as if she didn’t belong in the farm. Claire then while working comes across a diary written by Marcia dated somewhere in 1983. As Claire reads the diary, she finds out that Marcia was listed as a missing woman by her parents. Soon she come across another missing woman connected to the farm.

I enjoyed reading Stacy Willingham’s debut novel, A Flicker in the Dark and so I was super excited when I got my hands on her latest novel. This was a good thriller, and it was well written. Although the pacing of the story started a little slow in my opinion, the story started to get more twists and turns as well as interesting and intriguing. Reading this book gives you faint glimpses of life in the South of the USA particularly in a small town. Claire is ridden with guilt that she couldn’t stop Natalie from disappearing and her determination to find what really happened to Natalie was courageous. I also liked how unpredictable the whole book was and the tense and complex atmosphere in the plot made the story more interesting to read. I didn’t expect the ending however–it was completely unpredictable and unexpected twist at the end.

Overall, I actually enjoyed reading this book. This was the fourth book I have read from this author and I am looking forward to read more from the author! Overall it is worth 4 stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.