Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Black-Eyed Susans, by Julia Heaberlin {ends 9/7}

Thirty-two hours of my life are missing.

My best friend, Lydia, tells me to imagine those hours like old clothes in the back of a dark closet. Shut my eyes. Open the door. Move things around. Search.

The things I do remember, I'd rather not. Four freckles. Eyes that aren't black but blue, wide open, two inches from mine. Insects gnawing into a smooth, soft cheek. The grit of the earth in my teeth. Those parts, I remember.

It's my seventeenth birthday, and the candles on my cake are burning.

The premise of this novel intrigued me, and the book is being compared to Gone Girl, although in my opinion it's more like Dark Places (also by Gillian Flynn) meets The Lovely Bones. The novel is a whodunit mystery, and it took me most of the book to figure out who the killer was that had kidnapped Tessa about twenty years ago, when she was a teenager.

Official synopsis:

For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.

I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.
I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.
The lucky one.

As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.

Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.

What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.

Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.

Each of the chapters in the book are either in the present time or in 1995, when Tessa had to give her testimony about what happened that night. A man gets put away in jail for the crime, to Death Row, and his execution is coming up; however, Tessa is now having doubts about what her 16-year-old self thought to be true, and she thinks the killer might still be out there. 

I'm usually pretty good at guessing "whodunit" but this book definitely kept me guessing throughout its pages. Tessa's best friend as a teenager, Lydia, disappears mysteriously with her parents shortly after the "event," as Tessa's psychiatrist calls it; her father was also a mean drunk. Tessa wants to put all of the events of that year behind her, but the "Susans," as she calls them (the ones who died) are always in her head; not that she hears voices, per say, but they "live" with her still.

I'd recommend this novel for anyone who likes mysteries, or who are a fan of Gillian Flynn's work, as it was similar. I still have a few unanswered questions now that I've read the book in its entirety, but it does wrap up nicely, and it's written very well, too, almost like poetry. 

4 stars out of 5.

{Click here to purchase}

*Disclosure: I received an e-copy of this novel for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.

GIVEAWAY:

Enter via the widget below. One lucky reader will receive one hardcover copy of Black-Eyed Susans. Giveaway will end on Monday, September 7th, at 11:59pm EST, and winner will be notified the next day and have 24 hours to respond, or an alternate winner will be chosen.

U.S. residents only, please.

Good luck!

Black-Eyed Susans