letting in fresh air

On a whim, Charlie Colbert decided to leave her home in London and go to journalism school in New York. She’d inherited some money from her grandmother, so the expensive, exclusive graduate school tuition would be paid for. All she had to do was to leave her parents and her younger sister to chase a dream on the other side of the world. Little did she realize how much would change for her.

Nine years later, Charlie is the editor of a prestigious magazine and engaged to Tripp, a successful son in an old money family, one of the old guards of New York Publishing. Charlie works so hard to have it all. She keeps herself slim, she sees her therapist weekly, and she hides her panic attacks. Or, she had been. Until it all started popping up in the media again.

Charlie had been one of the students caught up in what had been called Carrell University’s “Scarlet Christmas,” the night that left three students dead and many unanswered questions.

When it happened, Charlie had been covered in blood and in shock. She’d had to practically be carried out of the building, even though she had no wounds. At the hospital they had cleaned her up and changed her clothes, but it was days before she could talk about what she had seen. She ended up lying to the police about what had happened. She’d had to lie. If she hadn’t, they would have arrested her.

Now, as the days tick down to the ten-year anniversary of the Scarlet Christmas, it’s all starting again. The reporters with their questions, the news stories, the emails and phone calls. With the current frenzy for true crime media, there is also podcasts and shows asking all over again what happened and what got missed and why there are holes in the original timeline. A news anchor, Stephanie Anderson, is making a movie about Scarlet Christmas. Charlie wants to stop this movie from being made, especially by Steph. Steph knows too much. She had been there too. It was her sister who had been attacked first.

As Charlie unravels, trying to hide her most terrible secret, she gets more and more desperate, more and more unhinged. But as she gets closer to the truth, she finds that she gets closer to who she really is. When she finally learns the truth she’s been keeping from herself all those years, will it help her heal, or will it break her apart completely?

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead is a stellar debut novel about the consequences of mental illness and unprocessed trauma. Told through the eyes of a survivor of a brutal attack, with detailed flashbacks of the semester of grad school that led up to the horrible events, this story unfolds like an onion, the layers wrapped over each other with a tiny kernel of truth in the middle that changes everything.

I thought this book was amazing. With Charlie as an unreliable narrator and those around her wanting to help but not being able to crack through her tough outer shell, this story gets so tense that I could feel my own muscles tense. Stop and remember to breathe as you read this one, be wary of elevators, don’t touch the broken glass, and remember that the best way out is through. There are so many lovely surprises along the way with this one that I don’t want to give much away, but know that it is worth every single word to get to that ending. This is not one to miss, and remember the name Jenny Hollander, as (I am hoping) this is just the first of many exciting thrillers coming from her.

Egalleys for Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.