"Butterflies as symbols of evil. How could that be?"
Trace of Evil (Natalie Lockhart #1) by Alice Blanchard
Natalie Lockhart is conflicted. She has a list of hard things she'd faced in her life. Natalie's now back in her hometown of Burning Lake as a detective. Burning Lake a town where everyone knows everyone, but in the end, they didn't.
A town with a history of witchcraft that drew tourists and troubled the teenage population. The attraction of witchcraft for the teenagers of the town is like a rite of passage. All partake, not all relinquish it.
"On the surface, it would appear that Burning Lake had a sparse Wiccan population, but that was due to the fact that many of them were still in the broom closet."
We have disappearances, we have secrets, we have dead bodies and we have concentric circles linking everything together.
"Death was like a secret. You could bury it deep underground, but it wouldn’t stay buried for long. Eventually, our secrets—like old bones—had a way of knuckling out of the earth and into the sunlight. You had to make your peace with fate."
Twenty years after their sister Willow's murder, Natalie, her sister Grace and her niece Ellie gathered at the cemetery as they did each year to celebrate Willow's deathiversary.
Later that same evening, Daisy Buckner is found "in a puddle of blood" on the kitchen floor by her husband Detective Brandon Buckner and Natalie. Daisy was a longtime friend of Grace's and a co-worker teaching at the same school. The hunt for Daisy's murderer leads to all sorts of possibilities, including Wiccan curses.
Always in the background, humming away, is the town's love-hate affair with its witchy history, the secret covens and the chant kids have grown up with, "By air and earth and fire and rain, we will remember you.”
But that's not all, there's also the "Missing Nine." "Nine transients [who] had gone missing from Burning Lake." "These pitiful victims were mostly unloved and forgotten."
As the newbie on the force one of Natalie's tasks is to review the files--just in case!
Then there's Natalie's recurring memory of a childhood trauma that occasionally overwhelm's her.
I am conflicted about this story. It was exhausting but I just had to kept reading, feeling that around another corner might lie the answer! Question! Do answers lie? Some do! Some lay in wait ready to trip us up. The truth revealed here will trip most of us up.
A St. Martin's Press ARC via NetGalley
*** 1/2
A town with a history of witchcraft that drew tourists and troubled the teenage population. The attraction of witchcraft for the teenagers of the town is like a rite of passage. All partake, not all relinquish it.
"On the surface, it would appear that Burning Lake had a sparse Wiccan population, but that was due to the fact that many of them were still in the broom closet."
We have disappearances, we have secrets, we have dead bodies and we have concentric circles linking everything together.
"Death was like a secret. You could bury it deep underground, but it wouldn’t stay buried for long. Eventually, our secrets—like old bones—had a way of knuckling out of the earth and into the sunlight. You had to make your peace with fate."
Twenty years after their sister Willow's murder, Natalie, her sister Grace and her niece Ellie gathered at the cemetery as they did each year to celebrate Willow's deathiversary.
Later that same evening, Daisy Buckner is found "in a puddle of blood" on the kitchen floor by her husband Detective Brandon Buckner and Natalie. Daisy was a longtime friend of Grace's and a co-worker teaching at the same school. The hunt for Daisy's murderer leads to all sorts of possibilities, including Wiccan curses.
Always in the background, humming away, is the town's love-hate affair with its witchy history, the secret covens and the chant kids have grown up with, "By air and earth and fire and rain, we will remember you.”
But that's not all, there's also the "Missing Nine." "Nine transients [who] had gone missing from Burning Lake." "These pitiful victims were mostly unloved and forgotten."
As the newbie on the force one of Natalie's tasks is to review the files--just in case!
Then there's Natalie's recurring memory of a childhood trauma that occasionally overwhelm's her.
I am conflicted about this story. It was exhausting but I just had to kept reading, feeling that around another corner might lie the answer! Question! Do answers lie? Some do! Some lay in wait ready to trip us up. The truth revealed here will trip most of us up.
A St. Martin's Press ARC via NetGalley
*** 1/2
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