The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

First Sentence: On August 12, 2000, Abby Morris, out of breath with sweat trickling down her temple, was hurrying down the gray ribbon of gravel road for her nightly walk.

Crime writer Wylie Lark is snowed in at the farmhouse where she retreated to write. The setting is perfect as two decades earlier, two people were murdered there, and a girl disappeared. What she doesn’t expect is to find a child nearly frozen in the snow, or that someone is desperate to find them.

There is nothing worse than starting out reading a prologue pretending to be Chapter One, a character who is too stupid to live, and a woman willing to put up with physical abuse. The author lost my attention from the very beginning.

THE OVERNIGHT GUEST is yet another book with multiple timelines, alternating narrators, and multiple points of view. While some may appreciate that style of writing, I find it a tiresome and annoying device.


THE OVERNIGHT GUEST
Susp-Wylie Lark-Iowa-Contem
by Heather Gudenkauf - Standalone
Park Row, Jan 2022, 336 pp
RATING: DNF/F