A year ago, on Christmas Eve, Alice Harper and her family were involved in a car crash that resulted in the disappearance (and likely deaths) of three family members. Alice’s memory of the crash is very vague and incomplete. She just remembers being found on the side of the road. Her family have never been found and Alice has struggled to cope while living with her aunt and uncle. Now Alice accepts an invitation from her friend Maya to dig through old items in the basement of an abandoned house which Maya’s mother is contracted to clean with her cleaning service business. In the house they are shocked to find a child’s backpack, which looks suspiciously like the one belonging to Alice’s missing little sister, and horrifyingly, a man’s body stuffed into a large suitcase. Is it Alice’s missing father? And if so where are the rest of the family? Detective Jess Lambert is on the case, still struggling to cope with her own grief after the death of her young daughter.

I think I was holding my breath through the last quarter of this book! Such a tense and gripping read. Jess Lambert is back, investigating the discovery of a body in an abandoned house and its possible connection to the mystery of the missing, and presumed dead, Harper family. The year-old mystery pulls the reader in immediately; it’s a snowy night in Killer’s Grove when the Harper family drive home and have a terrifying crash on the route. The car flips and lands on the roof, and teenaged Alice is found wandering on the road, injured and confused. Although the scene is covered in blood and broken glass, the remainder of the family has disappeared. The novel unfolds in a mix of flashbacks and present day, with multiple POV. It is a compelling and engrossing read, with lots of twists, including two unexpected jolts in the last quarter of the book. But it isn’t all thrills and spills – there is a great deal of heart and emotion in this novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would say it is even better than the first one.

Many thanks to Christina McDonald and Thomas & Mercer for providing an e-copy to read.