I received an ARC of The Existence of Bea Pearl by Candice Marley Conner in return for an honest review through NetGalley. Thank you so much to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
Sixteen-year-old Bea Pearl knows her brother isn’t dead. Even if her parents don’t agree. Even if the entire town doesn’t believe her. She knows it’s true. When orders came to evacuate Lake George due to rising floodwaters, Bea Pearl saw Jim head toward the river. She followed him. Only she returned.
When her parents have Jim declared legally dead, Bea Pearl decides it’s up to her to figure out where her brother could be if he is alive, and so begins to unravel the mystery of his disappearance. But it seems like someone else wants to know what he was hiding when his bedroom is ransacked. More clues come together: a scrap of paper, mysterious numbers that may lead to swamp monkeys, Jim’s shoes turning up in unexpected places. Bea Pearl can’t figure out what connects them all until she’s stolen from her bed in the dead of night.
Bea Pearl’s insistence that Jim’s alive and her quest to figure out why he went down to a flooding river in the first place takes a toll on her shattering family. But she must unearth the truth surrounding her presumed dead brother. Otherwise, the rumours are true and she has killed him. Because if Jim can stop existing, could she too?
OMG where to start with this book!!!
The existence of Bea Pearl is a southern mystery novel about family and deception, about really existing and what it means to exist. I loved everything about this book. It clasped me in its grip from the very start and it couldn’t let me go. The novel kept me guessing throughout the whole thing which for someone who has read a lot of mystery/crime/thriller fiction that is quite hard to do. I found all of the characters relatable and I loved the aspect that you never really knew who was good and who the villains of the piece were. I also loved that the ending shocked me.
It is a great book and definitely worth a read whether this is your usual genre or not. A very strong 4 stars from me.
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