Wonderland by Jennifer Hillier on October 5, 2015
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / General, Fiction / Thrillers / Crime, Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 432
Format: eBook
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Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee–whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning–is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park’s dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game?
The book only builds as the chapters are action-based and punchy. The characters felt damaged, deeply flawed, and cosmically real. I loved spending time with them in this corrupt town with its severely tainted set of politics. No one is to be trusted and everyone knows a different piece of the puzzle, that they may not be revealing right away, for fear of what its impact could have on their future in the town and among its people. Juicy tidbits are only revealed sparingly and at just the right pace as many seek to save face rather than be open and honest.
Five stars for this highly recommended thriller! Regarding the crime plot, I was so fixated on who I had convinced myself the murderer was, that the actual murderer totally escaped my notice. Love it when that happens. And there were plenty of suspects to choose from – this was definitely a small town with a lot of bad people of varying degrees.