An unusual contemporary mystery with friendship drama.

All the families live close to each other in a community that surrounds a huge park with hidden gardens and paths. The children run free in the green space and in and out of each others' homes with ease. It happens on a warm summer night during the annual Virginia Park Tombola. One of the children, 13-year-old Grace, is found by the rose garden gate in a coma with her clothes in disarray.

This was a slow burner that built up in perfectly paced storytelling that creates tension and suspense as everyone tries to figure out what happened to Grace and who was responsible. The novel is told in alternating points of view between the various characters -- women and children -- who live in apartments and homes around the park. Hints, secrets, lies, lots of domestic situations and concerns kept me guessing. I was hoping to believe the best of all of the friends - both the adults and the teenagers -- and many red herrings dangled to keep me on edge. The characters were multi-faceted and intriguing. I found the climax and conclusion quite satisfying and a bit surprising.

I listened to the audiobook while following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. I really liked the narrator - she did an excellent job voicing all the characters and her tone and dramatic flair enhanced the experience. I'd recommend this one. ( )

Drama

I enjoyed it while reading it but it was a little less mysterious in the conclusion than most of her books. ( )

Good read but did not like how it ended ( )

This one was just ok. I slogged through it to try to reach my goal but I really didn't enjoy it. There were too many characters to keep track of and most of them were extraneous and didn't matter much to the story anyway. For this story to be effectively told the author should have gone into more detail about each character. But then it would have been a 500 page book.The whole thing was just kind of muddy. And I was disappointed because from the reviews it sounded like a great story. ( )