The Girl From Widow Hills by Megan Miranda

           On the face of it Olivia seems to be pretty well set.  She has a very responsible job in the administration wing of the local hospital, a couple of close friends, a beautiful home and a neighbour who looks out for her.  Of course with the genre this is in you know that this is all going to be blown apart but that's what we are here for, right?!  

Sure enough not only did she have a huge childhood secret from her friends and colleagues but it seems it is now coming back to haunt her.  Of course, as the reader, we know all about what this secret is from the outset and the story is interspersed with extracts from police interviews, eyewitness accounts and media interviews with the family after it was all over. I enjoyed these glimpses back in to the Arden Maynor case and, if I'm being honest had this been a straightforward story about that it would have been so much better.  Instead we have the sometimes tedious story of how it is all coming back to haunt her.

I get the premise of the story and the denouement makes sense (I won't discuss that here because you may want to read the book for yourself).  However, for me it was all a bit obvious and contrived.  Certainly, some of the red herrings planted by the author regarding Arden/Olivia in the present day leave you wondering what the author was thinking and how she ever thought they would fool the reader.

Basically I gave this 3 Stars purely for the flashbacks to the disappearence and subsequent discovery of Arden Maynor and for a couple of later sections in the novel where Olivia starts to realise what really happened to her.  The juxtaposition between the media take and the reality is handled well and was enjoyable to read.  The rest of it not so much, too much padding and transparent misdirection.

I was quite trepidacious going in to this book as I have read Megan Miranda before and, in my opinion, the stories are slowly going downhill.  The basic plots are usually good but it is the execution of that plot that often lets the books down.  In previous books there has been what I perceive as a needless wandering down red herring routes that appears to be nothing more than a way to pad the word count.  To be honest this book suffers from that as well, fortunately to a lesser degree than in the previous book.  However, I won't be excited to see a new book release from this author and will likely only pick it up if it is on a cheap offer.

This review has been a long time coming.  I actually read this book between the 13th and 27th July 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines.  Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.