Book Summary

Sherrie chose this psychological thriller after seeing comments about how suspenseful and even disturbing it was, knowing it would make for some interesting weekly conversations.

The story is about an affluent woman named Perla, who lives in a fancy, gated community in Pasadena with her husband Grant and precocious daughter Sophie. On the surface she seems like the perfect put-together wife and mom, but no one knows she’s completely obsessed with an old murder case that happened decades ago.

Twenty-three years earlier, Leewood Folcrum confessed to murdering two young girls at a birthday party and has been serving a life sentence ever since. However, his case is not forgotten — not by Perla, and not by a doctoral student who begins interviewing Folcrum for his dissertation, slowly drawing out the truth about his motives and confession. As past and present collide, long-buried deceptions start to surface, raising the question of who is really deceiving whom — and who might be next to die.

What did or didn’t we like about this book?

This story was pretty disturbing, with its icy-cold protagonist and unexpected twists. We had lots of fun discussing the twists and turns each week as o​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ld secrets surfaced, and we questioned who was really telling the truth and who might be in danger next. Also, the writer added interesting tidbits of information about Perla, Grant, and Leewood at the beginning of each chapter from other characters in the book, giving us even more to discuss. It’s one of those books where you can’t fully trust anyone’s version of events, which makes it a really fun, twisty read if you’re into that kind of thing!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What were a few of the activities and food choices enjoyed throughout the reading?

We like to incorporate random national holidays into our weekly meetings, so during this reading, we celebrated National Ice Cream Cone and White Chocolate Day, made a trip to a local VFW for our discussion on National VFW Day, enjoyed a sandwich on National Sandwich Day, and celebrated some Sesame Street characters  and Vanilla Cupcakes on their respective days.

Where did we go after the book was over to celebrate finishing the book, why, and what food/drink/activities did we choose?

For this end-of-book celebration, we stayed local. Most of us stayed at Theresa’s house at least one of the two nights. On Friday we enjoyed lasagna and wine at home, and then more wine and live music by one of our favorite local entertainers, Levi Craft, at The Grape Life.

On Saturday, some played breakfast bingo at a local restaurant, followed up by everyone making a manifestation basket at a cute little plant shop. We then did a bit of a pub crawl on the Illinois side of the river before heading home to enjoy dinner, watch a movie, and maybe play a little on the Ouija board😊

The character, Grant, was a bird-watcher, so on Sunday we enlisted one of our nature-loving friends to take us on a bird-watching hike at Nahant Marsh in Davenport. We didn’t see a big variety of birds, but we enjoyed having Allison guide us. We then followed that up with a shot at the Scottie Rock (a memorial stone for our friend Scottie that’s located in a local park along the Mississippi River), and a wonderful Friendsgiving meal at one of our favorite local pubs, The Q.