Oof...
This one started out okay and then just fell completely and totally apart. Brief synopsis: Tessa Jamison is convicted of the triple murder of her husband and twin daughters. Ten years later, the conviction is overturned based on a technicality and she is released while waiting for a new trial. She and Sam, the CEO of the company Tessa and her husband owned, begin to discover more about the mysterious deaths of her family.
It sounds interesting, right? It would be if it had been executed well. First off, this takes place in 2021. The murders, therefore, happen in 2011. The way Tessa interacts with technology, you would think it was the 80s or 90s. She's amazed by a Keurig...a KEURIG. Pretty sure she would have had one of those before she went to prison. I did, and I'm not anywhere near rich. It isn't something that didn't exist before she went to prison. She's also amazed by cell phones. Yeah. It's baffling. These are small things, sure, but they had me rolling my eyes.
A bigger problem? How she was arrested. There was zero investigation and the trial took place 2 weeks after the murder. That does NOT happen. Also, later, something is found buried on the property that the police didn't find two days after a triple homicide? Come ON. Absolutely impractical, especially when it is found ten years later ONE day after she's released. This leads me to how involved she was in EVERY step of discovery for a new trial. She is there when witnesses are interviewed and yells at them. She discovers evidence that's boxed up that was never admitted for her trial. The amount of dissonance you have to have from what ACTUALLY happens in an investigation is ridiculous. It's all simply outlandish. And don't even get me started on the fact that the setting of the murders is so muddled. Apparently, there's a mainland and island San Maribel and there's literally a line in the book that says something to the effect of "she couldn't have committed the murders in San Maribel because she was in San Maribel." It makes it all so confusing because the reader never knows where everything's taking place besides at the mansion. It's just a big mess.
I won't get into the "shocking" reveal at the end, or how slapdash and rushed it all was. Things happened that were never properly talked about or answered, and everything's just sort of thrown together at the end. I gave this 2 stars because I finished it. Just don't go into this book expecting to be thrilled or amazed, unless your amazement comes from how badly written this is.