Book Review: What Waits In The Woods by Terri Parlato

Esme Foster is heading back home to Graybridge, Massachusetts, broke, unhappy and alone. Her once-promising ballet career ground to a halt after her hip had finally had enough, forcing her to retire from dance in her mid-20s. Her boyfriend Kevin assumed that she’d want to join him in developing his career as a restaurateur, and for a while, Esme persuaded herself that that was what she wanted, too. But she could only lie to herself for so long. After an absence of a decade, she’s finally heading home for good.

She’s well aware that she’s returning to a father whose alcoholism is killing him, and to the exhausted, recently-divorced brother who has been more or less patiently tending to their dad. What she doesn’t expect is to pull into her childhood driveway to find police and emergency responders in her yard. Her first concern, naturally, is for her family. The truth is only slightly less alarming.

Driven by a mix of guilt and relief at being able to escape Graybridge so soon after high school, Esme had pretty much severed all ties to her former friends. It’s still a shock though when she learns that one of those friends, Kara Cunningham, was found dead in the Fosters’ backyard just a short while before she herself arrived home. As the days pass, another sort of guilt begins to permeate Esme’s mind, as memories of the traumatizing car accident that took her mother’s life begin to combine with her fears over the fact that Kara’s killer still has yet to be identified and brought to justice:

And the man who showed up at the accident [and threatened me]. Is he still around? Perhaps looking for young women to kill? I can’t get the thought out of my head, and the knowledge that Kara and I resembled one another, at least from behind. Same straight, light brown hair, same short, petite build. When we were in high school, people were always mistaking one of us for the other. What if her murderer was the man who threatened me? What if he’s been lurking around Graybridge, waiting for his chance? Kara was struck from behind. Maybe he thought she was me.

As Esme tries to navigate her new life, she finds that her homecoming is more fraught with peril than she could ever have imagined. Graybridge’s secrets have lain long buried but are threatening to resurface once more, as her neighbors take perhaps too much of an interest in her life. Will Esme be able to survive a place she was once all too eager to flee?

Interspersed with Esme’s story is the point of view of Rita Myers, the older detective working the case of Kara’s homicide. While Rita quickly eliminates Esme from her suspect list, the rest of the Foster family lingers in her thoughts, and not just because of their proximity to the murder:

And old Mr. Foster has me shaken. Is this what’s in store for my brother? Wasting away, mind gone? But they’re nothing alike. Danny’s an English professor at a local college. He’s the smartest one of all nine of us, the only one who made it all the way through college and then some. He works, shops, socializes, lives a normal life, sort of. Most people don’t even suspect he has a drinking problem. But I know. I see the glass that’s always in his hand when he’s at home. I know there’s a stockpile of booze in the kitchen cupboard. I know his mind floats often to Ricky and Jimmy, our brothers who should be here but died long ago.

Family secrets and the ways we try to navigate fraught community dynamics lie at the heart of this second book in the Rita Myers series, as our two very different heroines find themselves fighting, both separately and together, for justice and the truth. Esme was long told that she had only imagined the entire episode with the stranger at the accident. Having her veracity, if not outright sanity, questioned was only one reason she was so ready to leave the whole place behind. Finally being taken seriously is small vindication in the face of the life-threatening circumstances she finds herself in now.

Rita’s perspective as an older, single woman with family issues of her own complements Esme’s tale as they each confront the secrets of Graybridge. Another highlight is Esme’s background as a dancer: the fading of her dreams grounds the narrative in realism as she struggles to adjust to her new life, for better or worse. While this series rightfully revolves around Rita, I wouldn’t be at all averse to reading more of Esme in the future too.