On Halloween, a group of teens go to an area called Sally In The Wood, a local road that’s said to be haunted by a murdered girl. The next morning, one of them is found dead, and laid out strangely. Rachel, the school guidance counselor at the expensive school the girl attended, struggles to deal with the grieving students, and the uncomfortable fact that her ex-husband, Ben, is the lead detective on the case, while their daughter Ellie hopes they don’t find out she was at the party that night.

Hannah Richell is the author of The Search Party, which I reviewed HERE, and I quite liked. The book moves between the perspectives of the three characters, but it’s in third person, so it avoids the overdone trope of the alternating narrators narratives. (I’m a little tired of that in books lately) The book could be comfortably called a domestic thriller or a mystery, and the tone of dark academia, lent by the school setting, and the woods and ghost stories that surround it, is nicely woven in.

On the whole, this is an excellent follow up to Richell’s previous novel. It’s a good detective novel, but with the differing perspectives of Rachel and Ellie, it’s not just another police procedural. The three different plotlines were very interesting, each person had different pieces of the puzzle, and they were used well to drop little plot points and clues along the way, keeping the intrigue going. I liked the complication that Ben and Rachel’s strained relationship added to the story too, as uneasy co-parents. It rounded out the story and the characters a little bit, making the story more dynamic.

As the books progresses, there are a few misdirects and red herrings, especially towards the end, which I always really enjoy. What does this or that teacher know? Why did this student say that? What is Ellie hiding? How innocent are the students at the school? It all leads up to an entertaining, twisty and satisfying conclusion.

I think the most enjoyable aspect of this read, for me, was the atmosphere. As I was reading it, it was late October and raining. The story takes place in the UK, at a prestigious boarding school, and I could hear the voices echoing down long halls and the dry, cynical faces of the teachers who’d been in harness too long. The story of the road called Sally In The Woods felt very British to me. When I lived in the UK, there was a funny road like that near me that there were plenty of stories about. The woods loom, darkly by the school, too. It had almost a Gothic vibe at times. It was lovely to read it with the rain falling outside.

To be a bit critical, it’s not a hugely original story. I don’t think domestic thrillers, or a lot of genre books, often are. Here we have the mean girl trope, the absent wealthy parents while the poorer ones love their kids more, an environmentally obsessed teen, a red pill Youtuber. It’s perhaps a more simple story than the plot of that in the Search Party. But all these elements are handled well, and the story moves forward nicely. It’s a solid read.

Read It If: you’re looking for a dark, slightly spooky thriller or mystery to read on a rainy evening, maybe by the fire. Lovers of either of those genres will enjoy it.

With thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for the ARC of this book for review.