‘Thirty-two hours of my life are missing. My best friend, Lydia, tells me to imagine those hours like old clothes in the back of a dark closet. Shut my eyes. Open the door. Move things around. Search.

The things I do remember, I’d rather not. Four freckles. Eyes that aren’t black but blue, wide open, two inches from mine. Insects gnawing into a smooth, soft cheek. The grit of the earth in my teeth. Those parts, I remember.’

Tessa was 17-years-old when she was abducted by a serial killer and left for dead in a ditch with three other girls, dubbed the Black Eyed Susans by the media. She was the only one to survive and her testimony helped to put the killer behind bars.

But now, decades later, the black-eyed susans planted outside Tessa’s window suggest that she identified the wrong man as the perpetrator, and that the real killer is still out there somewhere, watching her.

This is a thriller in the style of Gillian Flynn, with a damaged female character as its protagonist and a horrifying crime at its centre.

The blurb makes it sound similar to other recent thrillers (girl escapes killer and goes on to forge a normal life but the past comes back to haunt her) but this novel is anything but formulaic.

It is a lot quieter than other thrillers. There are no over-the-top chase scenes or gore just for the sake of it. Some readers might find this disappointing; I thought it made the book that much more powerful.

The story is told in alternating viewpoints of the same woman, one when she was 17 and was recovering from the crime, and the other years later when the man she accused of the crime is about to be executed on death row. There is enough variation in tone to easily distinguish between the two timelines so they never become tangled or confusing. The chapters are short and snappy, increasing the pace until the tension becomes almost unbearable.

Tessa is the protagonist, a woman with a horrific past who is now focused on raising her daughter and finding a way to keep them both safe from the serial killer who may still be hunting her. She refuses to be defeated but is haunted by the memory of being thrown in that ditch atop the bodies of dead girls. Her desperation to find out whether the killer really is the man she accused leads her to dark places, where the past refuses to stay buried.

I thought Tessa was a brilliant character, a woman not only dealing with a terrible past but also with the loss of the person she used to be before her confidence was stolen from her in the most horrific way possible. She does do questionable things and some readers might find some of her actions unforgiveable, but despite that I found I was still sympathetic to her plight and desperate for her to figure out the answer before it was too late. That is the sign of a good writer.

Despite the presence of lawyers and forensic scientists, this story never falls into the police procedural crime genre, which I always find incredibly tedious. In focus at all times is Tessa and her struggle not only to overcome her past but to deal with the guilt of possibly putting an innocent man on death row.

The writing is good if perhaps a little muddled at times. Heaberlin crafts some confusing and unnecessary metaphors and similes that could easily have been cut. The love story subplot also felt unnecessary and forced at times, which was a shame as all of the characters, main and secondary, were well-crafted enough to stand on their own two feet without it.

Everyone, from the forensic scientist to Tessa’s old friend, Lydia (who was one of my favourite characters), are brilliantly and realistically created.

The atmosphere is frightening and claustrophobic, and the feeling that the characters are running out of time creates incredible tension that will have you reading long after you promise yourself ‘just one more page…’

The ending was perhaps a little abrupt but I would highly recommend this book to fans of crime fiction and psychological thrillers.