Laura McHughReseñas

Although not a YA genre book, I was drawn to the story because the main characters were teenagers. They tried to solve the disappearance of their cousin and babysitter, who disappeared years-before while they were asleep upstairs in their bedroom. I liked the story's premise; plus, the adequate lists of suspects and the way those suspect characters were woven into the plotline. At times uncomfortable aspects were presented, yet those added to the overall suspense. I highly recommend this skillfully written novel to readers who like amateur sleuths they can root for, along with a few plot twists in the tale.

The Wolf Wants in by Laura McHugh is a mystery story that is told through the narration of two characters, both women and both residents of the small town in Kansas that has declined into apathy from drugs, alcohol and crime. Sadie Keller is determined to find out how her brother died even though it was registered as a “natural” death and eighteen-year-old Henley Pettit wants to escape the town and her family reputation’s for being behind most of the crimes being committed.

When bones are found in the nearby woods neither woman realizes that time is running out both for Sadie to discover the truth and Henley to make her escape. Family loyalty and dangerous secrets abound in this book as the characters deal with their grief, frustration and suspicions. Using the Opioid crisis as a backbone to the story, the author delivers a solid rural crime story.

While The Wolf Wants in is an effective mystery, I found that I wasn’t as emotionally drawn in as I would have hoped. The story is dark and gritty but somehow the characters didn’t gel for me. This is the second book by this author that I have read and I can see I will be reading more by her in the future. My slight hesitations regarding this book could very well be from my being so emotionally invested in the previous book that I read.½

Laura McHugh has just released her new book - Safe and Sound. I really enjoyed her debut novel, The Weight of Water. (my review) And I really enjoyed Safe and Sound as well.
McHugh again does a brilliant job of building the setting. Beaumont Missouri is a small town that the younger residents can't wait to leave. There's a heaviness to the town, dusty, dirty and worn with nothing to redeem it. Some folks get out - with a sigh of relief. Some stay. And some go missing...

Sisters Amelia and Kylee's older cousin Grace, is one of the missing. The girls are determined once again to try and find out what happened to her. Someone has to know something. And yes, omeone does indeed know something...

McHugh's prose are dark and gritty. There are moments where the sun shines through, letting hope in. And times where the 'wrong' comes to visit.

The plotting was excellent - with a finale that I couldn't predict. The ending was apt and right - I wish I knew what happened after the last page. An excellent read for me.

The first half was pretty good although it's easy to figure out whats going on. The second half every chapter gets more unbelievable and ridiculous than the one before.

Safe and Sound by Laura McHugh is a very highly recommended mystery following two sisters trying to find out the truth behind their older cousin's disappearance from their home in Beaumont, Missouri.

Amelia(Mimi) and Kylee were found safe upstairs in their bedroom when their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, disappeared. The sisters are now getting ready to leave the dead-end small town of Beaumont after high school graduation, just as Grace always told them to do. When the remains of a young woman are found on a piece of property outside of town, the sisters immediately wonder if it is Grace. There was so much blood found in the kitchen that night... As the girls begin to look into the identity of the body found they must continue to survive in a town that is cruel to young women and hope.

The narrative is told in the present day through chapters from the point-of-view of Amelia and Kylee while alternating chapters have the events from the past unfolding through Grace's point-of-view. This was a very effective plot device which serves to keep tensions high in both time periods. Readers know Grace disappears and is presumed dead due to the amount of blood at the scene. Seeing Grace grow up and her absolute devotion to her younger cousins establishes the close bond between the cousins. They were really as close as sisters.

Grace, Amelia, and Kylee are all believable, fully realized characters and you will want the best for them even while Grace is experiencing horrors of abuse by an uncle. There are so many layers of secrets lurking in both their families and with their friends. Additionally, the setting is a major character. Beaumont is a hard-scrabble, dead-end town where the best job is at the meat packing plant and it seems everyone is just barely scraping by.
The writing is absolutely wonderful, both descriptive and emotional. I marked several quotes, including one from an elderly former teacher, Mrs. Mummer: "When you're dying, Amelia, you remember your regrets. They crop up like stones in the river when the water gets low. Try to have as few as possible." For such a dark and desperate story there was one discussion that had me laughing, as it will others who know the Missouri/Kansas rivalry. (Condensing the discussion: What do you think it'll it be like? Living someplace else? / Probably something like when Dorothy lands in Oz. / Great. Maybe we'll get hearts and brains and courage. / That's only if you're from Kansas. We're from Missouri. We'll be lucky to get a can of Bud Light and a bootstrap.)

The final denouement was shocking and surprising, but also felt a bit incomplete. 4.5 Thanks to Random House for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2024/04/safe-and-sound.html½

This was another excellent mystery/thriller/family drama from Laura McHugh. I loved the dual timelines of Grace in the past and Kylee & Amelia in the present, trying to figure out what happened to her. Some of Grace's chapters were very hard to read - the abuse she suffered was so awful. I would have liked an epilogue to give some closure to the characters. Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC.

Make no mistake, Laura McHugh understands dysfunctional family dynamics, and spinning tales that move back and forth in time, better than any current author. Beginning with her Thriller Award-winning debut, THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD, and now with SAFE AND SOUND, she has solidified that status. This story revolves around sisters Amelia and Kylee and their cousin Grace and the no-future town of Beaumont, Missouri. Six years earlier, Grace went missing, presumably abducted and likely murdered. The sisters, who want nothing more that to leave the dead-end town, first set out to uncover what happened to Grace, and find her, dead or alive. As the story shifts between Grace before the abduction and the sisters after, dark family secrets boil to the surface. Who took Grace? An itinerant stranger, or someone close to home? How far would the killer go to cover the crime? As the sisters peel back the layers, they find themselves in a dangerous spiral, unsure who to trust, and who to fear. This one you will put down until the final page.

DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly and Cain/Harper thriller series

This was okay, as far as mysteries go, although one has to really work hard to suspend disbelief at some of the plot devices. I found the protagonist a little too self-righteously emo for liking. But overall, it kept my interest long enough to finish the book. I did like what the book had to say about the unreliability of eyewitnesses and memory.

Audiobook, via Audible. Good performance by Sarah Scott.

Good mystery. Flows well. Wish there was a little more closure in the ending. Would read again

A routine mystery without any logical red herrings. Still a painless read that did an okay job of flipping between two time periods-now and then.

Intriguing

It took me a few chapters to realize the story was switching between current time and the past, and then I started putting the pieces together and had a pretty good idea how the story would unfold. There were a few unexpected twists, but I enjoyed having the pieces put together. I like it when a book wraps up all the loose ends and doesn't leave you wondering what happened to so and so. There's not much else I feel I can say w/o giving away the plot and story, but it doesn't take long to figure out what's coming.

I loved everything about this book. I have been to the Ozarks, and Laura's descriptions of the heat was spot on, for sure.

It was a slow burn for me...

until Lucy and Daniel cleaned out the trailer.

How in the hell did it not click she was cleaning up her friend's murder scene and helping somebody get away with that murder?

Hello? Any comments about that? Your uncle assigned you the task of cleaning up the crime scene of your friend's murder, helping ensure it won't be solved.

It's the story of an overly religious family and how as a result of some of their beliefs deprived their children of what is perceived as a normal childhood. The story opens with the character of Sarabeth, at 17. She's working at her family’s roadside farm stand and trying to process the news from her parents that she finds disturbing. They had earlier promised that she would be free to make her own choices about her life when she turned 18...but she is told she is now to be married. Sarabeth will never be in control of her own life and readers soon learn why. Sarabeth's family has not always adopted this hard line nor have they always followed the teachings of the Holy Rock church, which takes everything literally with no wiggle room whatso ever. No more movies, cable television, the internet or public schools. Sarabeth and her siblings are literally prisoners without bars. Just prior to her eighteenth birthday, she is brutally accosted, abducted, imprisoned, and then finally, dressed in only a bloody slip, released. Her abductor is never caught. Five years later, living in the city, Sarah...she no longer goes by Sarabeth... is trying to survive. Employed at an animal shelter, she is barely coping until one day she receives a phone call from an investigator wanting to interview her about what happened to her five years before. Another girl has gone missing, and the officer believes that this new case and Sarah’s cold one, are related. Reluctantly, Sarah agrees and, thus, sets out on a journey to rediscover her roots and the malignancy that grows within. It's a compelling and dark, dark read that is steeped in secrets, some benign and others, deadly.½

This was my second try at reading this one. It just didn't grab me the first time but the audio book that I was able to get from the library helped me get into it and stay involved.

It was a lot slower than I had thought it would be. And the mystery bits weren't as mysterious or intense as I had hoped. But even with that said, I felt for most of the characters - particularly the women. I think the author did a great job of writing Lila and Lucy and I liked that she set their POVs apart by making them first person, rather than the third person everyone else was done in.

I do wish the book had been a bit more intense but I liked the darkness of it. I'd give another book by this author a shot and would recommend it to my friends who like darker themed books.

*I received the ebook from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review. I have a more detailed review on C-Spot Reviews.

What’s Done in Darkness sounds like either a sex or serial killer novel doesn’t it? We’ll partially it is, at least to some degree. Sex definitely plays a strong role in the story, but nothing graphic and mostly implied. It’s a tale of abduction, or is it? It is by all means a story of religious extremism and corruption.

This is overall an interesting read, it will surprise you at times. When you think you have figured out who the villain is, think again! Excellent word craft leaves far too many possible culprits! Read this story, it’s a bit different!

Arden's twin sister disappeared when she was eight years old. The last memory she has is of a golden car driving away with sisters in it. Not long after that the family packed up their belongings and moved away from Keokuk. Now almost 20 years have passed and she is back home in. Her father is dead and she has inherited Arrowood, the old family house. For Arden is it strange to be back home, the town isn't as prosperous as it was before and her old home holds bittersweet memories. But, Ben and Lauren, old friends of her are still living in the town and perhaps she will finally find the answer to what happened to her sisters all those years ago.

This is a book that I hoped would like. I have a weakness for mystery books and two long-lost twin sisters pique my interest. I was pleasantly surprised with not only liking the book but loving it. Laura McHugh has written an incredibly compelling book that was hard to put down. The one that "I will only read a chapter turns into one hour or twp of reading). I was actually quite sad when the book ended, even though it ended perfectly. It was more like I had come to like Arden, Lauren, Ben, and Josh so much that I wanted to spend some more time with them.

The mystery is intriguing, are Arden's memories correct, she was only eight and she was a bit sick the day her sisters disappeared. Are the girls dead? Or did someone just take them? Could someone close by having taken them? Someone that is still living in the town? The questions are many and the book will, in the end, reveal the truth of what happened 20 years ago.

I like that Laura McHugh didn't add a love triangle into the story. I was a bit worried when Lauren met Ben and then Josh showed up that it would turn into a sappy love triangle. I hate it when that happens. Everything turned out just perfect, and I think one of the reasons I so enjoyed the book was the fact that the characters were so well-written. They felt normal with faults, even Courtney, the girl from Arden's childhood who could have been written as a jealous overbearing bitch that would do anything to hang on to Ben felt OK as a character.

The book was intense, sad and thrilling to read. I loved every minute of it!

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!

It was a pretty good mystery, but the book could have been written a bit better.

I'm going to start a list called 'Books to read if you really want to know the South.' This book would be on that list. Granted, it's set in Missouri, so maybe not technically the South, but we make exceptions for the Southern part.

The prose is wonderful. A good combination of sparsity and weight. There are so-called "third act" problems. It got a little cinematic there for a while, and some of the plot lines were left in a state of semi-unresolvedness. But that really doesn't take away from the truths of the rest of the novel. The importance of blood ties, the insular nature of small, isolated communities, the call of one's home soil. Of course, it helps that I grew up near some of the areas mentioned in the book. Even if the town is fictional, the landscape is not.

So, want to know the South? To really know it? To feel the humidity build until you feel the storm breaking in you bones? Read this book.

Small town secrets, timely topics, and characters that will break your heart. Another outstanding read by this author and my first 5 star book of 2021.

What’s Done in Darkness by Laura McHugh is a 2021 Random House publication.

In rural Arkansas, seventeen-year-old, Sarabeth, is abducted and held hostage for five days. She was miraculously found, but her abductor was never caught. Despite the horrendous trauma she endured, this event serves as a catalyst for her to finally escape her ultra-fanatical religious parents.

She left home, shortened her name to Sarah, and works at an animal shelter. She still lives with nightmares of being held hostage- by both her parents, in one way, and her abductor, in another. She worries about her little sister who is about to be married too soon, fated to a life Sarah only barely managed to escape, herself.

While none of her friends or colleagues are aware of her past, she is still tracked down by a highway patrol officer, named Nick Farrow, who works in the missing persons division.

He calls Sarah asking for her insights and help in the abduction of a sixteen-year-old girl. The kidnapper’s modus operandi is eerily like Sarah’s experience, but initially Sarah is reluctant to get involved.

Gradually, Nick coaxes Sarah into helping him- which also prompts her to visit her sister- hoping to save her from the life her parents have forced upon her.

Oh, wow. Laura McHugh knows how to weave a taut, pulse-pounding tale of suspense! The Gothic tones of her novels are pitch perfect, and this one is no exception.

There is a heavy atmosphere, a strong sense of foreboding that kept me riveted to the pages. It’s edgy, but also a personal triumph for our heroine. Sarah’s is braver and stronger than she knows.

Her courage is what brings her case and other ones to light- and although she must accept that there are things she can’t change, she can take live her best life- and live by example.

Nick and Sarah made a good team- and hopefully, we’ll see them team up again someday.

Overall, this is another great effort by McHugh. It’s a short novel, but it really packs a punch!

Would have earned a fourth star, but I listened on audio, and one of the two narrators was AWFUL. She spoke in a tiny, lisping baby voice that was just not appropriate to the character. It was a bizarre casting choice - she does not seem to be an established narrator. Maybe she’s a friend of the author? The story and characters were compelling or I’d have abandoned it.

A solid thriller about escaping from a Christian cult, confronting the past, accepting other people's choices, and finding hope after trauma. The pacing is excellent, the story is emotionally gripping, and the descriptions of the Ozarks countryside is stirring. My first Laura McHugh, but I'll search out more.

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh is a 2014 by Spiegel & Grau publication.

Sixteen- year -old, Lucy Dane, has lived in the shadow of Lila, her beautiful mother, who disappeared when she was a child. Many folks in Henbane, believed Lila was a witch, and those rumors are still whispered about behind Lucy’s back. If her mother’s disappearance wasn’t enough to cope with, years later, her friend Cheri also disappeared.

When Cheri’s body was found, Lucy stumbles across a startling discovery that could be a clue to Cheri’s murder. This prompts Lucy to start asking questions, and do a little investigating on her own. Her unwanted snooping uncovers disturbing information about her mother, leading Lucy to believe the two cases could be connected…

This, believe it or not, is McHugh’s debut novel!! I was impressed by her other books, and knew I needed to circle back and read this one too.

McHugh has an amazing gift of creating a taut atmosphere. This story grabbed me right from the start and I had a really hard time putting it down.

The story develops across two timelines and dual first-person narratives, gradually piecing together the events of the past and connecting them to the present. The suspense is gripping, the story is both riveting and heart wrenching.

Overall, McHugh’s debut is every bit as riveting as her follow up novels. If you like dark, compelling thrillers written with a literary tone, this is a book, and an author, you’ll want to try.

4+ stars

All Too Real. This is one of those books that apparently I can speak to in a way no other reviewer on Goodreads has so far - from the conservative evangelical American Christian side. Growing up on the exurbs of Atlanta, I knew lands not dissimilar from what McHugh describes in this text in the Ozarks. Very rural lands where even by car the nearest single stop sign town can be an hour away. Farmlands with houses tucked into the trees or far out in the fields. And while I never exactly imagined these kinds of events taking place in them, I'm also familiar enough with the very strains of extremely conservative evangelical Christian culture that McHugh plays off of here. And yes, a lot of the attitudes McHugh describes are all too real - and fairly common, within those circles. Even the ultimate actions here are close enough to things I've personally seen as to be plausible, including the actual endgame and reasoning - which would be a spoiler to even discuss glancingly. An excellent creepy thrill ride, this is one of those books that could damn near be a news article. Which would make it a perfect candidate for a screen near you. ;) Very much recommended.