4 Stars from me
I was quite fascinated by this storyline and loved that it had folklore, rituals, paganism, mystery and witchcraft peppered throughout.
There is intrigue from the get go with a family moving from America to the small and remote island of Mull off the brutal Scottish coast. The locals do not exactly welcome them with open arms and so when their daughter goes missing they turn to a private investigator from Canada that they find online.
The investigator, Sadie, is equally not welcomed despite her endless and dogmatic approach to finding the missing teen. True to her word, she finds the missing girl, tortured, suffocated by sand, wearing a seaweed crown and hidden in a cave.
Tension builds as Sadie herself becomes under suspicion and it is evident that this wasn’t a one off killing and no one on the island is safe.
Is it Sadie, is it something to do with the family’s past, or is there something more ritualistic at play? I had many thoughts and theories as I read this book and enjoyed all of the traps, red herrings and reveals along the way.
Big fan of Helen Fields books. My thanks to Avon Books, Netgalley and the author for an ARC in return for an honest review.
Blurb: In search of a new life, seventeen-year-old Adriana Clark’s family moves to the ancient, ocean-battered Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Then she goes missing. Faced with hostile locals and indifferent police, her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque.
Sadie is the best at what she does. But when she finds Adriana’s body in a cliffside cave, a seaweed crown carefully arranged on her head, she knows she’s dealing with something she’s never encountered before.
The deeper she digs into the island’s secrets, the closer danger creeps – and the more urgent her quest to find the killer grows. Because what if Adriana is not the last girl to die?
Read and Rated 