You Will Never Know

Starred review from August 15, 2020
Prentiss' dark debut shows a Massachusetts family torn apart by murder. This isn't Jessica Thornton's first stab at domestic bliss. Raised by a father who beat her mother and first wed to an alcoholic car salesman killed in a one-car DUI, she's been married for three years to sweet, understanding realtor Ted Donovan. Ted's son, computer geek Craig, and Jessica's daughter, track star Emma, have never bonded, and Ted's hit a dry patch that's made the family depend more than ever on the pittance Jessica earns as a bank teller. But all this seems perfectly normal until Sam Warner, the bullying captain of the wrestling team at Craig and Emma's high school, is shot to death on a night when both the kids had sneaked out of the house, allegedly to take part in a scavenger hunt arranged by an unidentified party, and Ted falsely claims to have been home watching TV with Jessica. As Detective Doug Rafferty, of the Warner Police Department, tracks down one lead after the other, evidence implicates someone in the family. Even more devastatingly, it becomes alarmingly clear that each family member's loyalty is sharply limited. Jessica favors her daughter, Ted his son, and the children evidently no one but themselves rather than each other. The remorseless progress of Prentiss' narrative, which rivals Harlan Coben's suburban thrillers in its scope and mastery, reveals so many unspeakable secrets, most of them withheld from anyone else in the family, that the most urgent question that emerges is which of them is the biggest monster. The fade-out, pitilessly detailing the costs of their survival, is as horrifying as the threats that have been challenging them. The most ruthlessly contractual account of family life you'll ever read.

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August 31, 2020
Bank teller Jessica Thornton, the heroine of this tantalizing novel of suspense from the pseudonymous Prentiss, and her second husband, Ted Donovan, a real estate agent, live in Warner, Mass., with their teenage children: Jessica’s daughter, Emma, and Ted’s son, Craig. Though Ted’s real estate business is in trouble, Jessica hopes she can help the family financially once she starts taking business courses at the local community college. Then popular Sam Warner, the high school wrestling team captain, is found shot to death in Warner State Forest. With a scion of the town’s founder as the victim, the police are pressured to find the killer—fast. Then a police detective shows up and tells Jessica he needs to talk to her and Ted about Emma and Craig. Are things as bad as she fears? Or are they much worse? All she knows is that she has to take action to protect those she loves. Prentiss does a fine job shifting the reader’s expectations regarding suspects, motives, and even the crimes committed. Fans of fair play mysteries will be impressed.

November 1, 2020
After a lifetime of heartbreak and hardship, things are finally looking up for Jessica Thornton--a loving second marriage, a daughter with a bright future, and a chance for her own long-delayed dream of academic success to come true. But it all starts to unravel in a single night. Her daughter and stepson are implicated in a terrible crime, her marriage is not as perfect as she thought, and a man is asking uncomfortable questions about a painful chapter of her past that she believed she'd put behind her. How far will she go to hold her life together? The intensifying pace as the walls close in on Jessica certainly keeps the pages turning, and the twists and turns that grow out of her unreliable narration may have the reader tempted to go back and see what clues they missed. A solid domestic-thriller debut that vividly illustrates Tolstoy's maxim that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

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