“Ten years ago, my boyfriend killed my best friend.”

Micah was in high school when her boyfriend, Alex, was arrested for murdering her best friend, Emily. Emily was a dancer with hopes of Julliard when she died at a high school party. Micah has spent the past ten years trying to move on while Alex has spent the decade in prison insisting on his innocence. Micah has moved back to her hometown and opened a coffee shop and is living with another high school friend, Ryan.

Everything is going well for Micah, until her past becomes her present. Texts, high school photos and other reminders of Emily’s death start infiltrating her life. As she opens these old wounds, she discovers an online community of “armchair detectives” that have latched onto Emily’s murder. Soon, Micah becomes obsessed with the forum and we begin to wonder just how much we can depend on Micah’s narrative as truth.

This debut suspense novel was structured in a way I haven’t seen before, but thought was really effective in building suspense and creating doubt in the reader about Micah’s paranoia and sanity. The story is told in multiple timelines with each chapter starting in the present as Micah is driving to an unknown destination and addresses the narrative to an unknown individual. As each chapter continues, we revisit various points in the past without division in the chapters. This structure took some time for me to adjust, but once I did, I really found it an interesting and effective way to build suspense. The ending was not the strongest part of the story for me, but I thought the entire novel was well-done! I recommend making sure you have a chunk of time when you start this one in case the structure takes you time to adjust too. It’s worth it!

Check out Catch Her When She Falls by Allison Buccola at the Library (https://catalog.lclibs.org/polaris/search/title.aspx…).