Open house : a novel

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Title:

Open house : a novel

Personal Author:

Sise, Katie, author.

ISBN:

9781542092678

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

273 pages ; 21 cm

Abstract:

"A missing young woman, ten years gone. A town still held in the grip of an unsolved mystery... A decade ago in upstate New York, art student Emma McCullough walked into the woods and was never seen again. It's a mystery that still haunts her bucolic university town and her broken family, especially her sister Haley, whose need for closure has become an obsession. But now, finally, the first piece of evidence in the vanishing has been found: Emma's bracelet, lodged in a frozen piece of earth at the bottom of a gorge. For Emma's three best college friends, for a beloved former teacher, and for Haley, the chilling trinket is more than a clue in a resurrected cold case. It's a trigger. Then a woman is attacked during an open house, and the connections between the two crimes, ten winters apart, begin to surface. So do the secrets that run as deep and dark as the currents in this quiet river town."

Subject Term:

Missing persons -- Fiction.

Cold cases (Criminal investigation) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Detective and mystery fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction).

Electronic Access:

Language:

English

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Location
Searching... Hillview Branch	Book	FIC SISE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Lebanon Junction Branch	Book	FIC SISE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mount Washington Branch	Book	FIC SISE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A missing young woman, ten years gone. A town still held in the grip of an unsolved mystery. A breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by the bestselling author of We Were Mothers .

A decade ago in upstate New York, art student Emma McCullough walked into the woods and was never seen again. It's a mystery that still haunts her bucolic university town and her broken family, especially her sister, Haley, whose need for closure has become an obsession. But now, finally, the first piece of evidence in the vanishing has been found: Emma's bracelet, lodged in a frozen piece of earth at the bottom of a gorge. For Emma's three best college friends, for a beloved former teacher, and for Haley, the chilling trinket is more than a clue in a resurrected cold case. It's a trigger.

Then a woman is attacked during an open house, and the connections between the two crimes, ten winters apart, begin to surface. So do the secrets that run as deep and dark as the currents in this quiet river town.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Sise (We Were Mothers) weaves together the stories of two crimes in Waverly, N.Y., in this crafty novel. Things open with the discovery of a bracelet belonging to student Emma McCullough, who disappeared 10 years earlier from the University of Yarrow in Waverly. The police reopen the case, which triggers the grief held by Emma's younger sister, Haley, now a med student at Yarrow, as well as the pain carried by Priya, a former professor of Emma's, whose husband, Brad Aarons, had an affair with Emma and is now Haley's biology professor. Meanwhile, Haley and her fiancé are house hunting, and Josie and Noah Carmichael, their real estate agents, were close friends with Emma. At an open house arranged by Josie, Haley is surprised to see Brad and Priya, and shocked to find Josie bloodied and unconscious on the kitchen floor. As Haley learns about Emma's involvement with Brad and Priya, she wonders if the attack on Josie was connected with her sister's disappearance. The narrative alternates in present-day chapters from Haley's and Priya's perspectives alongside a parallel narrative in Emma's voice from the year she vanished. All the characters have secrets, and while the prose is fairly flat, Sise's talent is her ability to keep readers guessing about which character might be covering for whom, and she keeps the surprises coming. This will appeal to fans of Big Little Lies. Agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Dec.)

Booklist Review

Ten years ago, Haley McCullough's older sister, Emma, died under suspicious circumstances, and her family isn't sure if it was a tragic accident, suicide, or murder. With the discovery of new evidence, the investigation reopens, unearthing long-held secrets that threaten the relationships--and the lives--of several residents of small-town Waverly, New York, including Emma's former best friend, Josie, and Josie's husband Noah, who was in a relationship with Emma when she died. As Haley sorts through everything she thought she knew about Emma, she realizes that some of the people closest to her may have been involved in Emma's death, including her fiancé and her anatomy professor. Sise captures the insular nature of small towns in this domestic drama, and a series of unpredictable twists makes everyone the culprit for at least a little while. The resolution is satisfying, and an epilogue, set five years after the mystery is solved, shows that justice has been served. Readers who enjoy suspense fiction with a strong focus on relationships, like that of Liane Moriarty or Jessica Knoll, will be drawn into the McCullough's story.