****Because You’re Mine

mountain path, woods, forest

By Rea Frey – In Rea Frey’s compassionate new psychological thriller, Lee is a single mom living near Nashville with a seven-year-old son who’s on the spectrum, and her life isn’t easy. She has a couple of things going for her. She has a circle of three good friends, especially her closest friend Grace who’s one of the few people her son Mason is fond of. Mason’s handsome, dedicated occupational therapist Noah is helping him with his small and large motor skills as well as channeling and challenging his amazing intellectual capacity. And, Lee works from home, with a hair styling studio in her garage, which means she’s always close at hand, just in case.

In the book’s prologue, you learn a woman took a nighttime mountain hike and that it ends tragically. No spoiler here: the first words of the book are “She is going to die.” But you aren’t sure which “she” took that fatal tumble. The first chapter rewinds the story to a week before the mountain outing and fills in the missing pieces.

One of the women friends suggests a getaway for the four of them in the North Carolina mountains, and Grace thinks the mountain mini-vacation will be the perfect time to tell Lee some important news, which she does. There’s considerable fallout from this revelation, and an even deeper exploration of how Lee and Grace became the adults they are. While Grace has been preoccupied with her secrets, those that Lee hides are much deeper and more dangerous. Maybe.

In the mountains, the secrets start tumbling out and she—the ambiguous she from the prologue—dies. But that’s not the end of the story, there are layers and layers yet to come, a past to be excavated.

Just when you think you understand this story and the roles of the players on the board, Frey produces another surprise from her characters’ pasts that suggest a totally different dynamic at play. Nor does she tie the ending up with a too-neat bow. An excellent read.

Photo: Cortez13 for Pixabay, creative commons license.

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