Apologies I could only find an image with two of the three books in it! This series of books has been written/released pretty quickly. First in January 2018, the second in July 2018, the third was released on January 1, 2019 so you don’t have a long wait between books in the series like you do with some authors. Unfortunately the 4th and probably final book in the series is not slated to be published until December 31, 2019.
TRIGGER WARNING here for gun violence, school shootings and survivor PTSD.
The books are set around a fictional school shooting, one of the most deadly in the US, in a town in Texas called Long Acre. The school shooting takes place some 12 years before the first book and we learn that four women were placed in a therapy group together and although they were not friends at the time of the shooting, they bonded in their therapy sessions. We have the goth Latin chick, too cool for school; the A student, highly ambitious student; the track star and the dance team captain. They vow to remain in touch but of course, drift apart.
The One Who Got Away
The first book in the series opens with the four girls coming back into Long Acre to film a documentary commemorating the shooting (which is apparently going to give the profits to the victims and victims families, which is given as the only reason they’ve agreed to do it). Way back when they were Seniors, the girls wrote letters to their future selves and buried them. They are meeting for dinner and opening the letters to see whether they followed their dreams (spoiler alert, they haven’t!). This book focuses on Olivia Arias, the cool Latin Goth. She had been having a secret relationship with the school football star, Finn and Finn had left her on the night of the shooting to face down a gunman alone, so he’s suffering from guilt about that. Finn is also back in town for the documentary and they reconnect. Olivia has not followed any of her dreams and this leads her to examine her life more closely. She has a spectacularly unpleasant boss and a very stressful job and the other girls remind her how carefree she used to be. Things are resolved satisfactorily and she and Finn only appear briefly in the next two books.
The One You Can’t Forget
This is Rebecca’s book (the straight A over achieving one) and I didn’t read this until recently. I read the first book a while ago but I did not feel drawn to Rebecca in the first book and so was not particularly bothered to read her story. But the third book in the series was getting such great reviews, I thought I had better read Rebecca’s story (but started off by re-reading the first one). Rebecca is an only child, Daddy’s girl. Daddy is partner in a large law firm and Rebecca is now on the partnership track at the same firm. She’s a divorce lawyer working crazy hours, still single and not particularly happy. One night, walking home late from work, Rebecca is mugged at gunpoint and because of her previous PTSD from the school shooting, pretty much freezes and is in serious danger as she cannot cooperate with the muggers. She is rescued by a stray dog and a man who comes to her aid. The man is Wes, a down on his luck chef. Wes is down on his luck because his wife has recently taken all in his divorce (and you guessed it, Rebecca represented the wife). There is a nice subplot here about Wes starting an after school cooking program for troubled teens, which I found interesting. Rebecca realizes that following the path she and her (very horrible overbearing) father mapped out for her 20 something years ago is not serving her particularly well and I liked her personal growth in this story that allows her to see and then follow a different path for herself.
The One You Fight For
This book centers on Taryn, the former track star. Of all four girls, Taryn has followed her dreams to the letter. She has become a professor of Forensic Psychology and is trying to get an education/outreach program in schools to try to stop the alienation and mental health issues that can lead to school shootings. Taryn’s sister was shot and killed and her parents are still struggling. Of all of them, Taryn has remained in the home town as she has to stay close to her mother. Taryn meets a man after a disastrous blind date and they have a small interaction, but he then disappears. It wouldn’t be a romance novel if they didn’t keep bumping into each other after this initial meeting! It’s not a spoiler to say that the man in fact, turns out to be the brother of one of the killers (it’s in the book blurb, honest!). Luckily Lucas (his new name) confesses fairly quickly to Taryn who he really is and because of her research she understands more than anyone that there are multiple causes of this type of violence and there is not a genetic factor to this type of atrocity. This story is as much about Lucas as it is about Taryn. Lucas also has his life ruined by the shooting but in a different way – by the media, his parents split up under the pressure, he has to give up hopes of becoming an Olympic athlete. It was an interesting take on the subject and one that is not often written about. I loved their relationship and the issues that Taryn faced when thinking about telling her friends and family who Lucas really is.
Overall in the three books, the gun violence and survivor guilt is handled very sensitively (I thought). The characters are all trying to move on with their lives whilst not being able to forget what happened. The last book is definitely the best, the middle book, the weakest – Rebecca is definitely suffering a bit from the poor little white girl trope, which I didn’t particularly enjoy. I’ll be interested to read the last book, there’s a preview first chapter included in Taryn’s book so I am intrigued to read more!