If you’re in the mood to play Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, and long for a novel that gives you all the clues to solve the mystery, check out Sanctuary by V. V. James.
Sanctuary by V.V. James
A suspenseful debut that twists Big Little Lies with Practical Magic in a dark mystery of four women, a wicked secret—and an investigation that shakes their Connecticut town to the core.
Sanctuary is the perfect town . . . to hide a secret.
When young Daniel Whitman is killed at a high-school party, the community is ripped apart. The death of Sanctuary’s star quarterback seems to be a tragic accident, but everyone knows his ex-girlfriend Harper Fenn is the daughter of a witch—and she was there when he died.
VV James weaves a spellbinding tale of a town cracking into pieces and the devastating power of a mother’s love. Was Daniel’s death an accident, revenge—or something even more sinister?
As accusations fly, paranoia grips the town, culminating in a witch-hunt…and the town becomes no sanctuary at all. (blurb from Amazon)
My thoughts
First of all, I often read the ending of a book to see whodunnit. So after reading a few chapters to assess the situation, I scrolled to the end of Sanctuary and read the last few pages. Tucking that information into the back of my mind, I read the rest of the book in order.
A fiendishly clever mystery
Without giving spoilers, it’s hard to share much about the book. But James blew me away.
If you like playing detective, you’ll have fun trying to figure out the mystery. I am amazed at how cleverly the author plants the clues in plain sight. If I hadn’t known the ending, I would never have guessed it.
At various times, characters stumble across good but inaccurate explanations for what’s happening, or right explanations with the wrong people, or variations of these. There are lots of these moments in this book. But which one is the right one? It’s not until the end of the story that everything comes together. James spins us deeper and deeper into the story until we’re like the folks of Sanctuary, unable to escape the book, even if we wanted to.
Plot
As the story goes on, the tension grows. Relationships change. Friendships are destroyed, or were these friendships at all? Or merely mutually beneficial relationships? Or even parasitic relationships, where one feeds off the other person’s secrets and fears?
There are dozens of possibilities, and as the book progresses, the author raises the stakes over and over, developing the conflicts, and people reveal their truest selves. Stripped of their veneer of politeness, they are all capable of anything.
Whenever it seems things can’t get worse, they do. And sometimes these twists and turns come from unexpected people and in unexpected–but not unrealistic–ways. There’s a lot of truth here about human nature and what we are capable of doing, especially in the name of love. Throughout the novel, the centuries-old specter of the hanging deaths of witches looms in the background. It’s painfully easy to see how a frenzied crowd might make this horror a reality once more.
Connecticut has one exception to its ban on the death penalty: Homicide by Unnatural Means. Witchcraft. If Harper is found guilty, she will be executed; the colonial-era law does not allow for a stay of execution or a repeal of the law. Yet everyone knows that Harper, the daughter of a witch, has no magical gifts. That doesn’t stop the accusations from flying . . .
At one point, a character defines magic as the “art of doing things the crooked way, not the straight.” If so, then James works magic with her book. Nothing is straight-forward, and she takes us on a very crooked path indeed.
Recommended
Recommended for anyone who loves a well-written mystery!
Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.
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