Claire Campbell has hit a slump since she was passed over for a promotion at the New York Journal, where she worked in the investigative unit. Struggling as a freelancer, she decides to return home after receiving a call that her mother needs assistance. Claire hasn’t been home in fifteen years. After the tragic disappearance and suspected murder of her older sister twenty-two years ago, Claxton, SC, just doesn’t feel like a safe haven any longer. But as she returns, the pull of learning about her sister’s disappearance leads her on a journey of missing girls, forgotten futures, and an unpunished murderer in FORGET ME NOT by Stacy Willingham.
Once Claire arrives home, she travels to Galloway Farms, the vineyard her older sister worked at the summer she disappeared. She feels her sister’s presence at this place of wild flowers and serene beauty. Accepting a summer job at the vineyard, Claire finds a hidden diary, and she starts to unearth secrets about the owners and the history of the vineyard. As her investigative instincts kick in, she begins to wonder about the people she is working with and why this secluded vineyard is starting to feel like a trap closing in on her.
FORGET ME NOT is a sinister Southern mystery with deep family secrets and a town protecting its own. There are layers and decades of deception that factor into the story as one missing sister leads to several missing girls. A smooth, slow tension builds throughout the story as readers start to wonder who the villains are and whether Claire has put herself right in their path. From old photos, a missing sweatshirt, a black duffel bag, a hidden diary, a questionable land deed, and the ominous “Lily was here” carvings, the clues are compelling. There are a few surprising twists and turns that keep the plot fresh, and the final reveal wraps up all the loose ends. Good pacing, sound characters, and a coastal Southern setting lend to this overall entertaining story.
A pulse-pounding new Southern thriller from the author of the runaway bestseller A Flicker in the Dark.
Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist... until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.
With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire. A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time. However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard's owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary's contents… as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister's disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.
Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.
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