(24)Not That I Could Tell by Jessica Strawser

Sunday, April 1, 2018


Yellow Springs is a quiet Midwestern suburb.  The kind of place where you know your neighbors and they know you.  It was a Saturday night when the ladies of one neighborhood gathered around a fire pit.  The baby monitors were on,  the wine was free flowing, and so was the conversation.  And the next morning one of them, and their twin four-year-olds were gone.  None of them know what happened between the time they all went home and the next morning when Kristin and her kids are just - gone.   Clara was the hostess that night, as the police reveal unknown details of Kristin's life she is taken back to another fateful night.  Izzy was there, too.  The only single woman in the group and newest neighbor.  She is still reeling from the fact that her best friend(and unrequited love) married her sister.  She finds herself welcoming the advances of Kristin's left-behind husbands probably more than she should.  Natalie was also there, she welcomed the escape from the single parent life as her husband is deployed to Syria yet again.  Finally, new parents Rhoda and Randi were there, eager for a break from their infant daughter.  As the police investigate Kristin's disappearance they start to piece together a life, a marriage, that was kept from her friends.  Was Kristin a victim of domestic abuse or did she leave of her own free will?

Not That I Could Tell was such a great read!   The author mostly tells the story from the viewpoint of Izzy and Clara.  They were really two different characters in two different places in their life.  Clara is married and settled with her family. Izzy is, well she is lost after her sister got married.  She is lonely and seeking her "tribe", she is seeking her "people" and maybe doing so in all of the wrong places.  Her intense neediness was a bit annoying, yet she was a sympathetic character.   I could understand her loneliness. I could understand her desperate desire to find her "people."  I hope that our future neighborhood is one where I can sit around drinking wine with the ladies in my neighborhood.   Clara was a bit more of a likable character, she was like Moms in suburbs all over the country.  It was the part where her kids were sick and she was dealing with all that goes with three sick kids, that I knew that moms all over the country would love her.   I will say that there was a part of the ending that was so shocking to me, I thought "well done."  The other part wasn't that much of a surprise, but the combination of the two made for a great ending.  CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS

Bottom Line - I really liked the normal, everyday characters that could be found in Not That I Could Tell.  It may not be the "edge of your seat"  kind of thriller that I typically love, but the suspense was there just the same.  And that is what I love more than anything.

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