Forget Me Not

Finished March 21

Forget Me Not by Stacy Willingham

This standalone psychological suspense follows Claire Campbell as she returns to her mother's home in small town South Carolina. She returns because her father has called her and told her that her mother broke her leg and could use some help. 

Over twenty years earlier, Claire's older sister Natalie, eighteen at the time, disappeared and while her body was never found, her blood was found on a shirt in a man's car and he was convicted of the crime. Claire always wondered what happened, and since her sister's room is basically untouched, she pokes around and finds a cardboard box of photographs. Some were from the summer job at a small winery that Natalie worked at earlier in the summer, some were of their family, and there was one of the man with the car. 

Claire's mom tells her she doesn't need her, and Claire is tempted to go back to New York, but she's recently quit her newspaper job and gone freelance, and hasn't been doing well, so doesn't have much finances. She's also sublet her place to someone. So instead she decides to try to find the winery Natalie worked at, and she does. But the Galloway winery is no longer open to the public, and the man she encounters wonders why she's there. On a whim, she agrees to work there for a month, earning some money, getting a place to stay, and maybe learning more about her sister. 

But then she finds a diary, that seems to be by the quiet woman married to the winery owner, and she is intrigued by what she reads. A story that both captivates her and scares her. The young man who she first met is friendly and she begins to feel at ease with him, but not so much the owner, who she finds a little creepy. There is no phone reception there, but she does manage to email a former co-worker back home about where she is and what she's doing. She finds, that while the work is physically strenuous, it is satisfying and calming. But the suspicions grow, as she learns more from the diary, and from other research she does, and she finds that she may not be acting as 'under the radar' as she thinks.

This book is eerie and creepy, as we learn along with Claire what's been going on out here and with the people she's met. Who can she trust, and what does her mother have to do with it all?