Book Review: When You Find Me

When You Find Me by P.J. Vernon

This is an ok psychological thriller/police procedural audiobook that I probably would have enjoyed a lot more if I hadn’t read so much in the genre. Grey King, a wealthy heiress from South Carolina, comes home to her familial estate to celebrate Christmas with her mother and her sister. Grey is a raging alcoholic, and her main concerns are with how to score her next drink out from under the eyes of her jealous, controlling husband Paul. The Kings are the town’s wealthiest and most influential family, but Grey has a complicated and not completely warm relationship with her mother, who values appearances above all.

On Christmas Eve, Grey goes to a bar with her husband, her sister and a childhood chum. Grey gets blackout drunk, and only remembers kissing a man she used to hang out with. When she wakes up the next morning, she has no memory of how she got home and into bed or what the fallout was from her husband seeing her kiss her old flame. But that turns out to be the least of her problems, because her husband Paul is missing.

Alcoholics are common in psychological thriller novels, because someone who is mostly concerned with scoring her next drink is easily distracted, and someone who has frequent memory lapses can be central to the plot while still perpetuating the mystery. But Grey isn’t very sympathetic. She loves alcohol more than anything else in the world, and is not above hurting people to get it. Her husband is a dick, but she’s the one who got drunk and made out with an old flame in the bar. Her sister is distant, but Grey’s the one who totals her sister’s car by driving while plastered. And also, driving while plastered? Not cool, bro. Not cool. She’s rich, pretty, and young, with people who care about her. Except for being an alcoholic, she’s in good health. And yet, she mostly worries and feels sorry for herself, which makes her hard to like. She needed some kind of friendship or concern outside herself to make her sympathetic to me.

Nina (the detective) likes her, but Nina has very low standards. Nina basically likes Grey because unlike the other snooty white girls at the school Nina got a scholarship to, Grey was at least self-aware enough to know when she was being a bitch and apologize for it. Nina is the real hero of the story. Nina makes a few mistakes, but is mostly competent. She’s diligent and persistent and connected to her friends and family. She leads the reader through the winding path of the investigation. It’s an abandoned rental car. No, it’s a disappearance. No, it’s a murder. Nina also has history with the family from her aunt Tilda, who had been a servant in the King household and discovered something unsavory which ruined Grey’s late father’s political ambitions. How quaint to think that a political candidate being morally corrupt would actually be a barrier to election.

The setting was nice enough. The author set it in South Carolina, and included sandpipers and the marshes and the lush elegance of the old South to improve the story. The characters weren’t spectacular. Grey’s mother is interesting, Charlotte is kind of meh, and Grey is mostly just alcoholic+victim. The plot was mostly solid, but I didn’t really like the twist ending. Even the author admits that the mechanism she chose for the twist is kind of far-fetched and overdone. It also leaves some plot holes afterwards, like, how did Grey get home without anyone seeing her? Wasn’t that a long way to walk? Where did the weapon come from? How did the assailant manage to move Paul, given the size disparity and the difficulty of moving in a marsh? Why did no one else recognize the name Annie? Why doesn’t Grey have anyone in her life, besides her husband, she can talk to about anything? No hobbies (besides drinking) no job, and she doesn’t even drive. Does she live in a box all day? She has a phone and a credit card, and she’s desperate enough to drink that she’ll chug vanilla, but she can’t manage to call a cab or hire a local to bring her some booze. Desperate, but not resourceful? Sounds pretty dumb to me. Also, Paul’s proclivities were rather PG-13, and I rolled my eyes at the shock and disgust with which the detectives viewed them.

Mostly the plot rolls along enough that you don’t think of the discrepancies until later. I’m not going to say this novel was bad, but it wasn’t spectacular. If you like police procedurals and psychological thrillers, you’ll probably like it. It’s solid enough. But there’s a saying “no one cares what happens, they care who it happens to” and these characters were pretty forgettable. I doubt I’ll remember anything about this book a year from now.




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