On a balmy spring eve, eighteen year old Emily Vaughn zips herself into her prom dress with some difficulty, then walks over to her high school to confront the people she thought were her friends. It’s 1982 and Emily is about eight months pregnant. Reviled by her classmates, she is soon thrown out of the prom. Emily disappears on her way home; her dead body is found in a dumpster next morning.
Some forty years later, US Marshall Andrea Oliver, fresh off the academy, is dispatched to the Delaware home of a federal judge who has been receiving death threats. The assignment, though, is a cover for Andrea’s true mission: to uncover who killed Emily Vaughn.
If these names sound familiar, it’s because this book is the sequel to 2016’s Pieces of Her, which was recently given the Netflix treatment. It got mixed reviews; most people liked Toni Colette and gave the rest a wide berth. Since Colette is usually the best thing in whatever she’s in that’s hardly unexpected. Maybe that’s why I was disappointed when I read it’d be getting a sequel around the same time: it felt like a cynical cash grab by the author. I didn’t much care for Pieces of Her (the novel) to begin with, and I was frankly surprised by the fact that they picked this novel, out of all her books, for the screen. Andrea, in book one, was a maddening protagonist, whiny and clumsy and full of self-pity. Realistic though that might be it was also annoying.
Now, though, Andy has changed. She’s found a purpose in life. She thinks things through. Sure, not everything she does pans out, but for someone who’s new at the job she’s not doing too shabbily considering the small town hornet’s nest she’s been thrown into. It felt like an entirely different character.
I ended up liking this novel a lot better than I thought I would. Not everything works; there’s an unnecessary subplot about a cult that’s unsubtle and not very original, and it sticks out like a sore thumb front he rest of the story. Other than that, though, the novel is pretty great. Slaughter has a penchant for melodrama, which is largely absent here, and she has a keen eye for complex relationships. The language and the dialogue most of the time flow along nicely; they rarely feel forced. Her research is usually meticulous. And yeah, she should lay off of writing about rape so much, but at least she treats the subject with respect.
The novel is told through two perspectives: that of Andrea, in 2022, trying to navigate her way through small town life on the one hand and national politics on the other; and that of Emily, the emotional heart of the story. Emily is part of a group who call themselves a clique: a small group of rich, dumb white kids who wallow in their privilege while simultaneously railing against it. Together, they have a party. They use drugs. The next morning, Emily wakes up without her underwear and with no recollection of what happened. The description of what happens to her when the news of her pregnancy is made public is jarring and unsubtle, though probably not far from realistic. Mostly, people are concerned that Emily will ruin the reputation of a promising young man. Considering Brock Turner’s verdict not that long ago, I don’t think we’ve changed much as a society.