Beckett Bowery thought she’d never return to Wyatt Valley. The college town nestled in the Appalachians was her home. It was where she grew up, her parents taught, and she went to school – until a tragedy her senior year resulted in the deaths of two men and her roommate on the run as the prime suspect in their murder. Faced with the scrutiny and suspicion of town and college, Beckett moved away from Wyatt Valley and planned on never going back. But her daughter Delilah secretly applied, has received a full scholarship, and is determined to go to the school that has been so important to her mother and grandparents. But Delilah doesn’t know the full story of Beckett’s past, or how the town might feel about the child of its wayward daughter.
You Belong Here is a perfectly adequate thriller. It is certainly a page turner – I read the last hundred pages in a single sitting – and there are enough twists to keep you guessing. The setting is also beautifully atmospheric, and you can feel Beckett’s love and fear in all the descriptions of the college, the town, and the surrounding mountains. And the relationships are powerful. The fiercely protective love that Beckett and Trevor feel for Delilah is mirrored in other relationships throughout the book, and lead to the conclusion of the mystery in interesting ways.
Here’s my complaint, and spoilers ahead for those who want to go in knowing nothing: Beckett is an unreliable narrator, but in a way that’s very frustrating, as she is often lying or misdirecting in her internal thoughts. It’s one thing to have a character in a novel lie to others, that’s fine. But to think things to herself that later turn out to be false is incredibly frustrating. (I felt the same way about Jeneva Rose’s The Perfect Marraige and it was the final straw that led to my 1-star review of that book.) My other big complaint is how quickly Beckett’s suspicions jumped from character to character, often at whiplash speed. It was this person! No, it was this one! No, it was actually this person, except wait – it was THIS person all along! I wish I was joking, but she really switched her focus between suspects so quickly it was silly.
Now, all that being said, You Belong Here is still worth a read. It’s fun, propulsive, and twisty enough to stay interesting throughout. Beckett is, as I said, somewhat frustrating as a narrator, and Delilah is as willfully stupid about her own safety as all smart teenagers are. But it’s a tense, fun, atmospheric book with a mostly satisfying conclusion. A great beach read, or to enjoy curled up with a glass of your beverage of choice.
You Belong Here comes out later this month. I did not receive it as an ARC, but as my Book of the Month club pick.