Review: NOT THAT I COULD TELL by Jessica Strawser

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

MY REVIEW:

Jessica Strawser’s latest novel Not That I Could Tell is a riveting mystery that will have you looking at your neighbors and wondering how well you really know them.  The story is set in a quiet, little neighborhood in a small town in Ohio, one of those towns where everyone thinks they know everything about everyone.  A group of women who live on the same street decide they need a girls’ night so neighbor Clara takes the lead and offers to host a bonfire at her house one Saturday night.  The moms in the group test their baby monitors and realize with glee that their monitors will work from Clara’s yard, so the party is a go.  It’s a relaxing, casual affair, just good friends, wine, and a little gossip. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is said or done, but by Monday morning, one of the women, a mother named Kristin, along with her two young children, has gone missing.

None of the women who were at the party that night can make any sense out of Kristin’s disappearance. As far as any of them can remember, she didn’t say anything out of the ordinary at the party and didn’t mention anything about traveling.  The police are investigating the disappearance but they just seem to be going in circles, turning up more questions than they are answers.  And then there’s Kristin’s soon-to-be ex-husband, who has all but moved back into their house.  He claims that he just wants to be there in case they come back, but things just don’t quite seem to add up.

Did Kristin take a trip and just forget to tell anyone?  Did something happen to make Kristin pack up her children and flee?  Or is something even more sinister afoot?  Is Kristin’s ex somehow involved?  Or are Kristin’s friends just reading way too much into things?  Did they not know their friend as well as they thought they did?

There’s so much to like about Not That I Could Tell, but I think my favorite thing about it is that it’s a story about so much more than just Kristin’s disappearance.  Yes, it’s about that and in that sense, it’s a completely engrossing mystery, but at the same time, it just has so many more layers to it than just a straight forward mystery.

It’s also a story about the women in Kristin’s neighborhood, particularly stay-at-home mom Clara and neighborhood newcomer Izzy.  Kristin’s disappearance triggers painful memories for both of them and the story also follows how they deal with the emotional fallout.  For Clara, it triggers memories of a tragic event involving a friend who was a victim of domestic violence.  This leads her to immediately suspect Kristin’s ex of foul play because she can’t seem to separate what happened to her friend from what may or may not have happened to Kristin.  For Izzy, who has moved to the neighborhood in an attempt to escape the heartbreak of an unrequited love, Kristin’s disappearance serves as a distraction but also as a reminder that you can’t always outrun your problems and sometimes you have to just face them head on.  Unlike Clara, Izzy tries to be more open minded when it comes to Kristin’s ex since she knows what it’s like to love someone who no longer loves you back. Izzy even starts to befriend Kristin’s ex because she feels sorry for him, which really gets Clara fired up and leads to many tense moments between them as they continue to wait for news about Kristin from the police.

The author keeps all three of these women front and center by having the story unfold from each of their perspectives in alternating chapters.  We got to watch bits and pieces of the investigation into Kristin’s disappearance come together, while simultaneously watching Izzy and Clara as they work through those emotional issues that Kristin’s disappearance has dredged up for them. Kristin’s chapters are actually the most powerful – they are concise and emotionally raw – slowly but surely painting a painful journey that takes us up to the moment of her disappearance. Kristin’s chapters were also the ones that most effectively built up suspense as they seem to indicate more and more along the way that her life was much more troubled than she ever let her friends know.

I also loved how the author really delved into the psyches of each of these women while, at the same time, advancing the storyline of such an intricate mystery.  Her characterizations are so rich and so realistic – I found both Clara and Izzy to be so relatable.  They could easily be any of my own neighbors and so I found myself very sympathetic to what they were going through.

It took me a few chapters to really get into the rhythm of this story, but once I got going, I was really hooked.

Not That I Could Tell is a gripping and suspenseful read that had me turning the pages well into the night because I so desperately wanted to know what had happened to Kristin.  It’s a domestic drama written in the vein of books like Big Little Lies and TV shows like Desperate Housewives, so if you’re a fan of either of those, I’d definitely recommend this book to you.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:

When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It’s a rare kid-free night, and they’re giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal.

By Monday morning, one of them is gone.

Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance. Kristin was a sociable twin mom, college administrator, and doctor’s wife who didn’t seem all that bothered by her impending divorce—and the investigation turns up more questions than answers, with her husband, Paul, at the center. For her closest neighbor, Clara, the incident triggers memories she thought she’d put behind her—and when she’s unable to extract herself from the widening circle of scrutiny, her own suspicions quickly grow. But the neighborhood’s newest addition, Izzy, is determined not to jump to any conclusions—especially since she’s dealing with a crisis of her own.

As the police investigation goes from a media circus to a cold case, the neighbors are forced to reexamine what’s going on behind their own closed doors—and to ask how well anyone really knows anyone else.