This feels like a long book, a long haul which I only intermittently enjoyed. Bodie Kane, film professor and podcaster returns to the privileged boarding school where she was a scholarship pupil. She finds herself, together with a couple of the pupils in her group returning to investigate the death of her former room mate which occurred when she was a student there. The three of them are sure the wrong man was incarcerated for the crime, and Bodie has her own ideas. There's a long cast list here which I found hard to keep track of. Though there's plenty to make you think here - about power, about class, about sex and violence and about letting sleeping dogs lie - the whole book felt longer than it needed to be. Oddly, what I mainly got from this book was some idea of the American boarding school system: though as my understanding of its English equivalent is shaky, to say the least, I'm not sure how relevant this is to me. ( )

There is a lot to think about after reading this book. I can clearly see what the author is trying to do... she wants us to contemplate all the news stories about the abuse and murder of women, which has become so common that we are almost immune to the horror. She does this by repeating anonymous stories as a litany...
"That was her flip-flop beside the van. That was her comb in the ravine. That was her bank card at the ATM in Kansas, but that wasn't heron the security footage....That was her phone, tossed off the overpass. That was her blood in the bathroom. That was her hair in the attic. We're lucky to find this much. That was her laundry, still in the dryer. This was her body, but she's long gone." (p. 431)

Bodie is trying to solve the murder of her high school roommate, because she believes that the man serving time for the murder was wrongfully convicted. She returns to her high school and get her podcast students interested in the case. The book is written as a stream of consciousness letter to her one-time hero (or crush?), her music teacher Mr. Bloch.

Unfortunately, Bodie is written as a feminist #Metoo/Social Justice Warrior, but comes off as an unhappy, manipulative middle-aged woman who cannot get over being an outsider during her high school years. As she struggles to gain adult perspective, her whiny pining over the once hot high school dudes, her longing for acceptance by the in-crowd can sometimes be a little sad and pathetic.

"When someone asks me if I liked boarding school, I can no longer base my answer, by judgement, on the people I knew. Once, I might have thought of you. I might have thought of any number of people who weren't what I once believed. But I can still love the place itself... this was a place where someone could claim a small corner, a place where, by the end of four years, I'd be able to say I was part of something. Somewhere on campus, I'd find a place to leave a piece of myself. I was here. I was here." p. 422

5 stars for the plot
2 stars for the main character
3 stars total ( )

A mystery that becomes a meditation on men's assaults on women. I loved it! ( )

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc!

Unfortunate DNF for me, I really enjoyed the concept but it didn't draw me in, despite multiple attempts. Maybe it was the writing style, or maybe I have too much going on to focus on it currently. May come back to later!


UPDATE:

Tried again (this time with audio, thank you Julia Whelan for always drawing me in) and I really enjoyed it this time! Great perspective, characters, settings. It felt like a pretty realistic depiction of how this justice system works. Glad I found my way back to it

A girl died during Bodie's senior year at boarding school. Thalia was Bodie's former roommate, but not a particular friend. When Omar, a staffer in the PE department, is charged with Thalia's murder, the case is closed and everyone moves on . . . mostly. When Bodie returns to the school 20+ years later to teach seminars on podcasting and film studies, a student chooses the murder as the topic of her podcast, and being back on campus is stirring up all sorts of memories and doubts in Bodie's mind. Was the wrong man convicted of the crime? When new evidence surfaces, Bodie is drawn more and more into the case, and she has some questions.

I've seen a range of opinions on this book, so I approached it with caution and . . . I liked it! There aren't many really likeable characters in this book, and certainly Bodie struck me as both unsympathetic and unreliable in her narration. We never get outside of Bodie's perspective, and she clearly has an agenda of her own. I kept waiting for a plot twist that would reveal that the whole thing was in her head, but it's more complex than that. If you go into this book looking for relatable characters, or if you go in expecting a typical mystery/thriller, you might be disappointed. However, I found much to think about here. ( )