Scan barcode
A review by hayleybeale
That Weekend by Kara Thomas
4.0
We are delightfully once again in Kara Thomas’s niche: an atmospheric thriller with an on-the-edge teen girl at the center. While it delivers the anticipated revelations and slippery reality, I got a little confused by the complicated timelines.
Claire wakes up on the side of a mountain - she has a head injury, a cut on her hand, and no recollection of the last 36 hours. As it becomes clear that the two people she was meant to be with - her best friend Kat and Kat’s boyfriend (and Claire’s crush) Jesse - have disappeared, the police and the FBI seem to be circling around Claire as a suspect.
As with all Ms Thomas’s mystery novels, she creates vivid and authentic characters that inhabit a real world. Claire’s middle class background contrasts with Kat’s upper crust family and Jesse’s slightly wrong side of the track upbringing. The scene of the disappearance, Sunfish Creek, echoes those contrasts with the gated private lakeside community and the working class village attached to it.
The novel starts out with a typical Now and Then structure but then adds in some further complexity. Maybe I was reading a bit too fast, but I got somewhat bogged down in the different stories of what ‘actually’ happened and a little confused about why some things happened as they did.
Anyway, this is still an absolutely solid mystery that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys well-grounded thrillers led by teen girls.
Thanks to Delacorte and Netgalley for the digital review copy.
Claire wakes up on the side of a mountain - she has a head injury, a cut on her hand, and no recollection of the last 36 hours. As it becomes clear that the two people she was meant to be with - her best friend Kat and Kat’s boyfriend (and Claire’s crush) Jesse - have disappeared, the police and the FBI seem to be circling around Claire as a suspect.
As with all Ms Thomas’s mystery novels, she creates vivid and authentic characters that inhabit a real world. Claire’s middle class background contrasts with Kat’s upper crust family and Jesse’s slightly wrong side of the track upbringing. The scene of the disappearance, Sunfish Creek, echoes those contrasts with the gated private lakeside community and the working class village attached to it.
The novel starts out with a typical Now and Then structure but then adds in some further complexity. Maybe I was reading a bit too fast, but I got somewhat bogged down in the different stories of what ‘actually’ happened and a little confused about why some things happened as they did.
Anyway, this is still an absolutely solid mystery that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys well-grounded thrillers led by teen girls.
Thanks to Delacorte and Netgalley for the digital review copy.