The Night It Ended by Katie Garner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
When a private investigator reaches out to Dr. Madeline Pine, a criminal psychologist specializing in female violence, to ask for her help with a case, she is hesitant to assist.
The case involves traveling to a remote private school, for girls with behavioral challenges, to investigate a recent death of one of the students.
Madeline doesn’t know if she is capable of handling this right now. That difficult case last year almost ruined her.
When she hears about the dead girl though, found barefoot and in her pajamas at the bottom of an icy ravine, she can’t resist. The deceased, Charley’s, Mom is the one who hired the P.I. after the police ruled the death an accident.
Madeline has her own daughter, Izzy, about the same age. She can’t imagine being in Charley’s Mom’s position. She would do anything to find out what happened to her own daughter, thus she feels like she has to help.
Madeline travels to the school with the P.I., Matt, and begins interviewing the other girls on campus over the winter holiday. They’re few, but have a lot to say.
This story jumps between the current timeline, with Madeline at the school trying to figure out what happened to Charley, and audio transcripts of interviews from a case the prior year. You don’t know who the interview participants are, but it’s clear a crime has occurred and the interviewee is involved in some way.
I enjoyed this. I thought this was a solid suspense novel. I enjoyed the setting of the private school and the fact that it was winter break made it extra eerie, as there were very few people left on campus.
The remote location was great and there was even inclement weather to add to that effect.
I liked how cold and dark it felt. Additionally, I liked how mysterious our main character, Madeline, was. She was there to help solve a mystery, but she had her own mysteries as the Reader, I was trying to figure out.
I didn’t find Charley’s story super compelling, but nevertheless, it was still well done. I was more interested in the students that were still left and just getting to know them, as well as finding out their intricacies and secrets.
One of the downfalls of this for me was the narrative style. We had quite a bit of blocky-feeling, stream of consciousness narrative from Madeline and I’m never crazy about that.
Particularly towards the end, Madeline has some things going on with her where she is starting to lose her grip on reality. In those moments, it just felt too jarring to me, the way it was written. I am not a fan of SOC-narrative style in general though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Additionally, in the moments when Madeline was getting confused, I was getting confused and not in a good, suspenseful way. I feel like those moments could have been dialed in a little more to provide more clarity to the Reader.
Overall though, I did enjoy this. I liked the atmosphere and learning about the characters. I think the ending was satisfying and there was definitely a twist that I did not see coming. That made me happy!
Thank you so much to the publisher, MIRA, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
This was fun and I would definitely be interested in picking up more from Katie Garner!