Catch Her When She Falls

The premise of Buccola’s debut is certainly intriguing: 10 years earlier, Micah Wilkes’s best friend Emily died at a party in the woods, and Micah’s boyfriend was convicted of her murder. In the present, Micah is receiving mysterious threats, so she starts looking into whether Alex really did kill Emily. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. The pacing is extremely slow, and characters make extraordinarily odd choices to further the plot. Both the truth about how Emily died and the chain of events that led to Alex’s conviction are frankly ridiculous (like the witness who let an innocent person go to prison because no one ever questioned them directly), as is Micah’s response to figuring it all out. Attempts to create suspense or a sense of danger fall flat, and the author spends a lot of time building up clues that are either dropped completely or conveniently explained away without Micah having to do much. Frankie Corzo does a perfectly solid job of narrating.