All Good People Here: the gripping debut crime thriller from the host of the hugely popular #1 podcast Crime Junkie, a No1 New York Times bestseller

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I won’t waste time going into the plot, but apparently, writing podcast episodes is very different from writing a novel, because this story never got off the ground. The author did capture the small town atmosphere, but the mystery itself was a replay of the Jon Benet Ramsey case. I had high expectations that someone who works in true crime could come up with something a bit more original and compelling. The book’s progress is extra slow burn after the strong opening. The chapters were a little dragging. Because of the interesting topic I kept on reading and I was about to round up 3.5 stars to 4 but that abrupt, weird ending which force us fill the blanks to write our own ending was semi satisfying for me! Unfortunately I cut the half star and I decided to give three solid, it’s not very good but it’s still okay read stars! Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice. I wondered about Pete (sorry, Pete!) as it’s a typical plotline in thrillers to have the main character’s old friend she’d flirting with be a killer, but Pete was just a child when January died and seemed to have no motive. Who were the killers in All Good People Here? A journalist comes home to care for her beloved uncle who is suffering from early onset dementia and encounters memories of her childhood. There is one that has plagued her, it being the death of her best friend January Jacobs, who seemed to have been abducted and murdered at such a young age.

I understand him not saying anything in all the chaos of January’s death, but fifteen years later, when Krissy decides to come clean, he already knows. Both January’s and JBR’s parents gave somewhat awkward media interviews that made the public suspect they were not being forthcoming about everything they knew. The writing was adequate, but with too much telling, not enough showing, I grew bored and found myself speed reading. Then that ending! Is the final chapter missing from my e-copy? I don’t mind an ending that leaves a bit to the imagination or one that is slightly ambiguous, but this just ends at a pivotal moment.

Margot Davies was January’s best friend and 6 at the time of her BFFs disappearance and it shook her to her core. Believing in the real life boogey man her whole life since that fateful night. Twenty years later, and Margot is now all grown up and a hot shot crime journalist. January’s cold case has always haunted her and now in a neighbouring town another little girl goes missing under suspiciously similar circumstances. All this aside, the storyline was captivating enough that it kept me going. Ashley always has been a good storyteller. I just didn’t buy the story in the end. To me, it was a lot more believable that the Wallace guy had done it. Having Billy be the killer seemed like it was just a tactic to catch the reader off-guard– a gotcha moment. I would rather have had Wallace be January’s killer and Billy be Krissy’s. Really, I would have believed almost any motive for Billy to kill Krissy– he found out he wasn’t the father of Jase and January, he believed her to be January’s killer all those years and then just snapped, he found out that she was having an affair with a woman–except for the one that was given. Dave/Luke knew (since 1994) that he was the father of Krissy’s twins, knowledge made even more painful by the fact that he and his wife Rebecca were unable to have biological children. He attended January’s dance recitals to watch her from afar. January Jacobs: six year-old daughter of Krissy and Billy; participant in large state-wide dance competitions The police think Krissy died by suicide based on the note she left (which was actually part of a letter to Jase.)

And Mom’s the same as ever. Delusional.” Luke snorted. “What’s Bethany delusional about this time?” “She seems to think I’m a millionaire because I write for a newspaper.” The book has a timeline that spans twenty-five years, with major events happening in 1994, 2009 and 2019. Hope this helps you keep it all straight. I don’t know what ultimately made her snap, but I do know she was overly invested in January’s dancing, jealous and controlling. And don’t get me started on her relationship with Billy.” Not much to say here. Premise sound interesting to you? Save yourself some reading eye strain, go pop a big bag of corn and watch one of the eleventy trillion specials that have already been made about the JonBenet case. There's inspired by and then there's inspired by. This was waaaaaay too close to the real thing for me. I also really wanted to punch the lead in the throat for leaving her uncle on his own so much when the entire point of her returning home was because he wasn't capable of being left alone any longer. But I do love a house cover, still, so you know I had to snag an early copy of this instantly ; ) I liked Margot and Krissy and thought all of the characters were believable. While flawed, I could empathize which most of them. The mystery is sound, causing me to change my mind many times as to who the culprit might be. The whole story made me feel sad about all the things that could have been and all the small things that could have gone differently to avoid how it all turned out- I like a book that can leave me with that much emotion at the end.

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Also, when Billy kills Krissy, he says, “You shouldn’t have lied to me.” Uh… like 15 years too late, right? I mean, if he wanted to call her out for lying, wouldn’t he have done that a long time before? Why did he kill her anyway? I guess we’re supposed to assume it’s because he found the note in her purse. But then, wouldn’t he have said, “So, you know what happened, huh? I can’t have you telling anyone…” or something like that? I know this was to conceal who the killer was, but it was really ill-fitting. The whole suicide story was actually pretty unconvincing. The police never looked into it further? They never tested for gunshot residue? They didn’t find it suspicious that half of Krissy’s letter was torn off or that she lying by the door with her purse out, as if she was getting ready to leave? The had noticed a tiny bit of blood on Jase’s pajamas all those years before; could they not find any blood on Billy’s clothes? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have looked into this very deeply, given the family’s history. But maybe we’re supposed to just accept that the police were so convinced of Jace or Krissy’s guilt that they accepted suicide without investigating at all. Again, that seems ridiculous. And yet, I have to evaluate the dementia as the plot device that it is. Amnesia and memory loss in books is not my favorite trope. Luke reminded me a little of a character in The Survivors. Like I said before, there really aren't any surprises, and if there are, there's not enough suspenseful tension built up to make the reader care about the identity of the villain(s).