What Happened That Night by Deanna Cameron (REVIEW)

★★★

"I knew why she'd done it. I knew that Emily hated Griffin Tomlin the moment I'd told her something I never should have".

Clara's sister Emily murdered the boy next door, and only Clara knows why she did it.

This is a multilayered and complex story that takes some time to come together. Too much time in fact. The story is very longwinded. It easily felt like double its 300 pages. I know I am a reader who likes slow pacing, but this was borderline frustrating, with a lot of telling and explaining instead of showing. The writing is quite juvenile in that sense.

However, despite my problems with the telling, the actual story was interesting and did keep me guessing. I thought I had it all figured out early on, but there was always more to know. To the point it was quite unbelievable at times.

For a book tackling such sensitive issues as rape and assault, I would expect to feel some strong emotions. I didn't cry once (and I'm a crier trust me), but I did feel quite uncomfortable with the vivid description of some of the most horrific scenes.

The main character is a normal, pleasant girl whom a lot of people will relate to. She has gone through trauma that has changed her entire being and turned her whole world upside down.

“I almost wanted to tell him why she'd taken Griffin away from him and his parents. But I knew none of them would believe me about what happened between Griffin and me".

Probably my biggest gripe through most of the book was Clara's lack of understanding and forgiveness for people around her, for not reacting to things exactly how she wanted them to in the first instance. Sometimes people need a minute. And you should offer them the same understanding you expect to receive. I suppose this is something she had to learn.

I liked the dual perspectives of the book, present and past. I generally love that way of storytelling in any book. The information from the past was fed to us in just the right dose.

However, another issue I had was with the formatting of the book (at least I think that was the issue and assume it will be fixed) which made the story hard to follow. There was sometimes no indication that the story had moved on to another time or place. Not even a line between paragraphs. I often had to reread bits to figure out that the narrative had jumped ahead to another place from one line to the next. Very confusing.

I did enjoy this book, I was gripped by the plot and needed to know how it ended. But my overall impression is that it needs some serious editing to make it a more concise and appealing novel.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.