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Book: “When She Was Me” by Marlee Bush
Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, May 2024
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: There’s only one way out of these woods…
Ever since that night, twin sisters Cassie and Lenora have been inseparable. As the sole permanent residents of Cabin Two, their refuge on an isolated Tennessee campground, they manage to stay away from prying eyes, probing questions, and true crime junkies. Just the two of them, Cassie and Lenora against the world. The peace and quiet is almost enough to make them forget what happened all those years ago. Almost.
Until a teenage girl camping at the neighboring cabin goes missing, and the memories come rushing back. As the crime becomes ever more recognizable—they know better than anyone that so-called ‘happy families’ can be anything but—each sister suspects the other knows more than she’s letting on….
Trapped in the isolating, claustrophobic wilderness, Cassie and Lenora must piece together the truth of what happened—and the sinister truth lurking in their own pasts—before it’s too late.
Review: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for sending me an eARC of this novel via NetGalley!
What can I say, I love a good cabin the woods story, as I myself love a cabin in the woods. You know, assuming it’s not one of those pesky horror movie ones where everything goes terribly wrong. But I do love a book where there’s a cabin in the woods where everything goes horribly wrong, so of course I was interested in “When She Was Me” by Marlee Bush. The cover is clearly SCREAMING ‘I’m a cabin in the woods and things are about to go wrong!’ It also has twin sisters, a missing girl, some unreliable narrators, and promises of dark secrets. All of this is totally my jam!
To start, I really liked getting into the minds of twin sisters Cassie and Lenora, who have a shared traumatic past and a fierce devotion to one another. A devotion that is probably bordering on unhealthy. We jump between their two perspectives, learning about each other both from their own thoughts, but also sometimes from the other sister’s perception of the narrator at the time. I especially liked how this device made for. both better insight as well as a potential layer of unreliability. After all, Cassie may know more about Lenora than Lenora would like to admit (and vice versa), but there may also be misconceptions each has about the other due to their shared history and shared secrets. Sometimes when this kind of story of siblings, especially with twins, is taken on it can be have mixed results, but this was the strongest aspect of the book for me.
Now the mystery itself. It is definitely easy to read, and entertaining when the reader is in the thick of it. But I will say that it was pretty standard for a thriller, with all the boxes checked that you would expect to be checked (unreliable narrators, an isolated setting that makes for more difficult maneuvering, twist after twist after twist), without really doing too much outside of the box, or doing it in a way that is unique. There are misdirections that I could predict coming (though not to their full resolution or reveal, I will say), and I wasn’t invested in many of the characters outside of Cassie and Lenora, and even then that was more because of their dynamic and not because I was particularly attached to them as characters. It’s serviceable to be sure and I could see it being a perfect breezy beach read, and one that I enjoyed in the moment. But it didn’t really stand out from the litany of thrillers that came before it.
“When She Was Me” is entertaining and an enjoyable read. When I was in it I was in it. But it didn’t wow me as much as I had hoped it would.
Rating 6: It’s a pretty standard thriller, entertaining and addictive, but not really reinventing the wheel.
Reader’s Advisory:
“When She Was Me” is included in the Goodreads article “42 New Reader-Approved Mysteries for Spring”.