Sherri Smith | Follow Me Down

It's been a week since I've had time to post this! With summer approaching, my reading time has been getting sparse, but I am still trying my best! I had the pleasure of finishing up Follow Me Down by Sherri Smith yesterday and it was really good! 

I know every thriller out there with so much as an ounce of a twist will say it's the next Gone Girl, but this one actually had a setting that had hints of Gone Girl in it. That and the characters were really interesting and three-dimensional and the twists and turns just kept coming and coming! 

Plot: 

Mia Haas has built her life far from the North Dakota town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she is forced to return home. Back to the people she left behind, the person she used to be, and the secrets she thought she’d buried. 

Once hailed as the golden boy of their town, and now a popular high school teacher, Lucas Haas disappears the same day the body of one of his students is pulled from the river. Trying to wrap her head around the rumors of Lucas’s affair with the teen, and unable to reconcile the media’s portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories of him, Mia is desperate to find another suspect. 

All the while, she wonders: If he’s innocent, why did he run?

As Mia reevaluates their difficult, shared history and launches her own investigation into the grisly murder, she uncovers secrets that could exonerate Lucas—or seal his fate. In a small town where everyone’s lives are intertwined, Mia must confront her own demons if she wants to get out alive.

Review:

I naturally love a good thriller and mystery novel. This was so well done that I am already anticipating what Sherri Smith will do next. I am so impressed with Smith's style of writing. It's like a timer is trailing through the book. The suspenseful scenes are done fantastically throughout the novel and the 300+ pages really went by quickly! 

Each character introduced had their own story inside of the main mystery as to where Lukas is and who killed Joanna. And not one of them were to be trusted. Smith did a fantastic job of making sure no one was introduced and then later forgotten. I was surprised how easy it was to keep track of everyone!

I was impressed with the small tidbits of stories from Mia and Lukas growing up and their relationship with their mother. It wasn't done in a mundane way that I have seen in previous books I've read. These were small and got to the point of what we needed to know so that we could continue trekking along in present time to find out where is that damn Lukas and who killed Joanna?

This novel was suspenseful, captivating, and really sucked me in from the first page. The suspense, mystery, and at some times, heart was there. Within a double mystery, there were even a few other things I didn't think would amount to a mystery or something that would shock me, but this does not hold back on the shock factor of a true mystery novel. 

And then the ending happened, and it all made sense. I really didn't see this coming because this was quite frankly, a town full of bad people and each was a red herring to me. I wasn't surprised with the reveal of who was responsible because they were all so bad, but I did love the reveal and was quite shocked with a few things with that ending! 

Rating: 5/5