Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it’s been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Ruth Sterling thinks she knows her daughter. Catherine would never rebel, would never question anything about her mother’s past or background. But when Ruth’s desperate quest to keep her daughter by her side begins to reveal cracks in Ruth’s carefully-constructed world, both mother and daughter begin a dance of deception.

No one can know Ruth’s history. There is a reason why Ruth kept them moving every few years, and why she was ready–in a moment’s notice–to be gone in the night.

But danger is closing in. Is it coming from the outside, from Ruth’s past? Is Ruth reaching a breaking point? Or is the danger coming from the darkness that may live in Catherine, herself?

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Brittany and I were friends up until the ninth grade, when I grew boobs first and got asked to the Homecoming dance before she did. Brittany didn’t authorize that turn of events, and next thing I knew, I was uninvited to a group sleepover at her house. I didn’t mind all that much. Being Brittany’s friend was a lot of work. There were rules involved. You had to love Madonna but not Whitney Houston. You were required to sit at a certain table in the lunchroom. For some reason, wearing a sweatshirt inside out was a thing. Brittany did it one day, then the next day so did half the girls in our class.

In autopsies, even Alzheimer’s brain tissue looks confused, like some monstrous hand reached in and swirled everything around.

Rotten genes are programming me. I inherited them from my mother and she from hers. Fury seems to be the legacy passed down to the women in our family.

They both laughed in that way only mean girls can— it’s an art, really. It combines superiority and malice with a dash of exclusivity.

I didn’t know it was possible to be so deeply angry with someone and simultaneously love them so much that you wanted to hug them until it hurt you both.

It’s hard to reconcile those tales with the image I have of my mother as a hard-working woman with a vanilla sort of life. I guess I’ve never really looked at my mother as an individual. She has always felt more like a planet that orbits around me.

My Review:

 

This was a consuming tale filled with flawed and troubled characters that were either vile, sketchy, untrustworthy, paranoid, or dangerous, and I couldn’t always make up my mind which was which. I felt on edge during perusal from start to finish and concluded the tale with my shoulders in my ears and in dire need of a spa day.

The main characters were tightly wound and their inner musings and interactions were tautly written and fraught with tension. The writing style and storylines were evocative and intriguing and I quickly tumbled into the characters’ dark vortex each time I picked up my Kindle. The narratives were painfully perceptive yet not entirely forthcoming until the final chapters which were full of unexpected surprises. Sarah Pekkanen is a clever minx and has mad skills.