Esme Foster’s ballet career is over after snapping hip syndrome derails her professional plans. After working in her boyfriend’s restaurant for two years, Esme decides it’s time to head home and help her brother with their ailing father. When Esme arrives at her childhood home, crime scene technicians are working in the woods. A body has been found on their property, and Esme soon discovers it was her childhood friend, Kara Cunningham, in WHAT WAITS IN THE WOODS by Terry Parlato.
Esme soon learns that some things have changed in Graybridge, Massachusetts, while others have not. Esme’s brother, Byron, still harbors resentment towards Esme for leaving town after their mother’s tragic death and their father’s demise. The neighbors, the Ridleys, are still strange, and Cynthia Ridley has recently been released from a mental institution after serving time for killing her sister. Ray Ridley Jr. still smokes marijuana by the old pond in the woods, and costume designer Mr. York still walks his dogs at night. Esme’s high-school friends have evolved but are still a complicated group, with the return of Jack Crosby stirring up old jealousies. As Esme starts adapting to life back home, she fears an unknown menacing man who has haunted her dreams for years. Kara looked a lot like Esme. Was Kara’s death a case of mistaken identity?
Detective Rita Myers is hard at work trying to track down the suspect and uncover the motive for Kara Cunnigham’s murder. Clues are hidden in the woods, and secrets run deep with the neighbors. Can Rita put together the clues and solve this crime? Or will the nightmare continue and someone else will die?
WHAT WAITS IN THE WOODS is a suspenseful thrill ride that takes off quickly. Esme’s return home is marred by a murder. Told in the alternating POVs of Rita and Esme, the novel unfolds quickly, with Esme becoming more entrenched in her community’s secrets while Rita frantically searches for clues. There are plenty of suspicious characters and deviant behavior occurring under the facade of a nice, safe community. There are ominous links and connections to past events with present-day consequences, as well as many questions that need answering. The young neighbor accused of killing her sister--is she really a murderer or an observer who can help uncover the truth? Does Esme remember her childhood correctly? Was her mother the woman she thought she was, or were there cracks in the family back then? Plenty of red herrings and twists-and-turns will keep readers guessing until the very end of WHAT WAITS IN THE WOODS.
Her ballet career derailed by injury, a once-promising young dancer returns to her hometown only to face a grisly discovery – and the increasingly alarming realization that nothing from her past is quite what she believed – in this electrifyingly twisty suburban thriller for fans of Stacy Willingham, Greer Hendricks, and Megan Miranda. When Esmé Foster left the Boston suburbs to become a professional ballerina, the future shimmered with promise. Eleven years later, her career has been derailed by an injury, and Esme knows it’s time to come back to Graybridge to help her brother care for their ailing father. But her return coincides with an unthinkable crime. Kara Cunningham, one of Esme’s high school friends, is found dead in the woods behind the Fosters’ house. Esmé is shocked and grieving, but also uneasy. In her dreams, she still sees the man who showed up at the scene of the car accident that killed her mother—and told Esmé he was going to kill her too. Family and friends insisted the figure was a product of Esmé’s imagination, that she was concussed after the crash. But she and Kara looked alike, sharing the same petite build, the same hair color. Could Kara’s murder have been a case of mistaken identity? Detective Rita Myers is familiar with close-knit communities like Graybridge, where, beneath the friendliness, there are whispers and secrets. The town has seen other tragedies too, including the long-ago drowning of a young girl in a pond, deep in the woods. Even within the once-close circle of friends that included Kara and Esmé, Rita discerns a ripple of mistrust. Day by day, Esmé discovers more about the place she left behind—and the friends and family she thought she knew. Soon, shining a light into the darkness to learn what really happened the night Kara died is the only way she can bring the nightmare to an end .
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