So, I'm a little torn about this book. It was my Kindle First Reads pick for September, and I really love psychological thrillers. A murder mystery? Secret lives of prep school kids? A perfect marriage not being as it seems? Sign me up!

I admit, I like the journal entries better than the present. I did find some of it hard to believe (the high school investigative journalism class looking so deeply into a 20-year old murder, for example). Also didn't understand much of Ian's financial situation and how it was relevant to the story. Unless it was a red herring of the big secret he kept from his wife.

The perpetrator was exactly who the class thought it was, but I liked the little twist at the end for the motive.

And I have to be honest, but I didn't like the main characters that much and found it a little hard to relate to them. But despite all that, I did enjoy the story, the illicit romance between Andi and Dallas, and I wanted to keep turning the pages to know what happens next.

Its told in third person from Ian, Andi, and Cassidy's POV (their oldest daughter), and alternates between the past and present.

3 stars because I did like it, but I didn't love it. But I liked it enough to read it through to the end. ( )

Loose ends

The book was interesting enough, but I felt the ending was weak. Some of the climaxes just weren't. Not great,but not bad. ( )

I loved this book mainly because of the characters. The plot was okay, and the end was a little disappointing, but the characters were real and very likable. Ian and Andi were high school sweethearts at a posh boarding school when an unorthodox poetry teacher steals Andi's heart away. They get back together when the teacher, Dallas, disappears. Twenty years later they are happily married until a body is accidentally discovered trapped in a car at the bottom of Lake Loomis. When it's discovered that the body is none other than the missing Dallas, Ian, and Andi both struggle to understand how Andi's affair played a part in his death. Half the story is told through Ian and Andi's journal entries when they were seniors. The other half is told in real-time as the police and students of a journalism class, which includes their daughter Cassidy, delve into the mystery. Holding onto the love for their family, and a long legacy of supporting the school, they make surprising discoveries that they are forced to find a way to live with. ( )

I believe this was one of my Amazon First Reads picks--and it was surprisingly good.

Warning--Spoilers may follow. Read at your own discretion:
*****

The story alternates between the present day where Cassidy Copeland is attending the same boarding/prep school that her parents attended and the past when the Copelands were students there. Andi was apparently a literary prodigy and was allowed to take the senior seminar even before she was a senior. She's a bit disappointed that the year she's a senior (and expected to take the course) the writer in residence is a poet--and because she's a senior, she feels it would look odd if she opted out of the course.

I'm still not clear if Andi really had good poetry chops or if Dallas was just saying that to entice her to have a relationship with him. She did seem to be a bit of a muse to his creativity as best I could tell. In any case, Andi breaks off her long-time relationship with Ian to secretly take up with Dallas. I wasn't clear on whether Dallas had multiple relationships--I think that he did but the only one we hear a lot about was his with Andi--and that she suspects Georgina of wanting to have one with him--at least until Georgina links up with Tommy.

Cassidy is taking the senior seminar as a senior and her instructor is a journalist--who decides that the class will do a practical exercise in investigating Dallas's life after his body is found in a submerged car by a student who's trying to revive a one-time-tradition of the school that's since been prohibited.

The investigation uncovers a lot of secrets. (Ones that I'll let readers discover on their own.) How Dallas died wasn't any of the scenarios I imagined (but figuring that out is not always my forte so other readers may find different.) ( )