“Frankly, I’d rather be dead than be a panic-riddled recluse.”
REVIEW
Would I read this book again? Yes No Maybe
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Tropes | Trigger Warnings |
Psychological thriller | Murder, Violence, Stalking, Abduction, Alcohol abuse |
SUMMARY
When Poe Webb was 13, she was snooping through her mom’s email and found an email from a guy, that was not her dad, making plans to come visit her mother. Poe wanted to confront her mom about the affair but couldn’t make herself do it. On the day that he was supposed to come, her mom sent her to a friend's house. Poe came back early and ended up witnessing her mother get brutally murdered. The murderer addressed Poe, told her that her mother “didn’t say the safe word”, zip tied Poe, put her in the closet while he soaked the house with gasoline, let Poe go with the threat that if she tells anyone who he is or what she said, he would come back and kill her dad also. Then he sets the house on fire and gets away. Poe kept her silence, even going mute for a few months after the killing. She was so afraid for the murderer to come back, she even went back into her moms email and deleted all the emails between them.
When graduating from college, she moved to New York. In one of the emails, the guy had said something about wanting to live in New York. It was the only clue she had to go on, other than his name. But googling his name repeatedly over the years never brought anything up. She spent months not knowing how she was going to find this guy, until she gets the brilliant idea to make a dating profile using her mom’s picture. Within 3 days, she gets a message from a guy with a similar name. She just knows this is the guy. She sets up a meeting and when she meets him she knows for sure this is the guy. And she knows what has to be done - he needs to die. Painfully. She invites him to her apartment for a second date. She makes some appetizers with the special ingredient of rat poison. She then disposes of his body and goes about her life. She ends up moving back home to Manchester and then moving to her own house in Vermont. Poe starts a podcast called “Tell me what you did” where she invites criminals to come on her show and confess their crimes. Surprisingly, a lot of criminals do this. Some have even been caught and imprisoned thanks to Poe’s listeners. Poe’s producer and boyfriend, Kip, is the one who sets up the calls and screens them. Poe doesn’t know who she is going to be talking to or what the crime will be until she starts the recording. Even though she killed the guy that she is pretty positive killed her mom, she still starts every show wondering if the person will confess to her mom’s murder.
One of her guests is this really creepy, kinda familiar dude - Ian Hindley. He tells Poe that he killed her mom and she ends the interview and just hangs up on him. She thinks the guy is a stalker, trying to take credit for a kill he didn’t committ, or just really fucked in the head. She knows there is no way he can be her moms killer, because she already took care of that problem, but also…maybe? She just has this little part of her that thinks maybe she killed the wrong guy.
Kip is shocked that she ended the interview so rapidly, he thinks her mom died in a car accident. Poe ends up regretting hanging up on him and wants to talk to him again. He agrees - but on a live stream. She never does live streams but she agrees to it.
Before the live stream, she goes home to Manchester to see her dad. She tells her dad everything. How she saw her mom die, about the emails between her mom and the guy she was cheating with. Then she tells him about Hindley who wants to do a live stream claiming that he killed her mom. Her dad wants to go back to her house with her and stay with her for awhile. The night before the live stream, Poe finally tells her dad that she is almost 100% sure that this dude is lying because she killed her moms murderer. But …this guy knows things he shouldn’t, that only Poe and the killer would know so … maybe she made a mistake? Maybe she killed an innocent guy?
The night of the live steam Hindley gets on the podcast and recounts the murder of Poe’s mom. He doesn’t say anything inaccurate, he doesn’t lie once. Now Poe is like … wtf…. She is wondering if her mind is playing tricks on her now, making her think this guy seems familiar to the killer, or maybe it played tricks on her years ago in New York when she committed murder. Hinley says he wants to do another live stream where Poe can confess her sins. Poe is like why would I ever do another one? And he says well, you’ll have no choice.
Some creepy things happen - cars follow her home, a picture is moved slightly in her office - and Poe and her dad decide maybe they should go away for a few days. So they head to an Air B&B. While there, Hindley calls Poe from inside her house. Her dad calls the police but they get tehre too late and Hindley is already gone.
The next day, Poe’s dad goes into town to get some groceries. On his way back, he is run off the road. A guy gets out of the van with a taser and some rope but luckily for Poe’s dad, a police car happened to drive by, see the car in the ditch and stopped. Hindley jumps back in his van and takes off. Poe and her dad decide might as well go home because he knows where they are anyways.
On Halloween, Poe gets a bunch of text messges from Hindley, including a link to a video - he has kidnapped Kip. Hindley tells Poe she will get on another live stream, tonight, and confess all of her sins, or he will kill Kip.
Throughout the whole book, we are able to read snippets of the transcript of their live stream where Poe confesses everything. Hindley cut off a tip of Kips finger when Poe won’t cooperate. He also stabs him and then ends the live stream.
Poe’s podcast followers are wondeful armchair detectives and they dig into Ian Hindley. They find out that his real name is John Worbly, who was doing a twenty year sentence in prison when Poe’s mom was murdered. Which means he was lying - he didn’t kill her mom. Poe is staring out her window wondering how she can find Kip. The police are involved but they have no clues as to where Hindley/Worbly took Kip. As she is staring at the streetlamp outside she realizes the yellowish glow is the same yellowish glow that was behind Hindley/Worbly in the live stream. And it just so happens, there is an empty house down the street from her. Instead of being a smart girl and calling the police, or telling her dad, she just takes off for the house.
They’re in there. Kip is still alive - tied up and bleeding. Hindley/Worbly is there. He tells Poe that she will be killing Kip, before killing herself tonight. Then asks her how much his brother suffered when she killed him. He is her moms muderer’s brother. He tells her that him and his brother were very close and while Hindley was in prison, they talked a lot. He told Hindley all about the murder, and all the others he did, and they even laughed about how Poe got in contact with him, and he was going to have fun with her too. That’s how he knew everything.
Poe’s dad shows up, charges Hindley, Hindley shoots him, but just nicks him. Her dad gets up, kicks the gun away from Hindley, and uses a baseball bat to take out his knees. He goes for the gun but Poe tells him no. Her dad has a clean record, Poe does not. She’ll take care of this. She has Kip and her dad leave the room. She considers how to shoot him that makes it look like self defense and not an execution and then decides she doesn’t fucking care and shoots him in the back of the head.
Poe ends up getting fourteen months in prison. The courts agreed with self defense based on all the events in the days leading up to the murder. She admits to killing the dude in New York. But because he was a serial killer…and they couldn’t find the body…she ended up with a plea deal.