Beneath Cruel Waters by Jon BassoffMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thank you to Booklist for the ARC and the opportunity to review this title.
Holt Davidson returns to his hometown of Thompsonville, Colorado, to bury his mother, who has died by suicide. While dealing with her effects, Holt finds a box containing a gun, a gruesome photograph of a dead man, and a love letter. Who is the man in the photograph, and did Holt’s mother kill him? Who wrote the love letter? Is Holt’s sister, who has been in a mental institution since her teenage years, somehow involved? As Holt unravels his family’s past, he learns quickly that memory and truth can be very different things. From the beginning, Bassoff creates a powerful sense of place, heavy with dread. Throughout, the characters experience only fleeting moments of joy, but even those are surrounded by angst. The various points of view connect past and present smoothly, and the pace will keep the reader’s attention. Those who catch on to the conclusion will hope they’re wrong but may be sadly disappointed. This is a haunting and disturbing yet compelling novel, in the vein of Jen Williams’ A Dark and Disturbing Place (2021) and C. J. Tudor’s The Burning Girls (2021).
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