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Title details for Catch Her When She Falls by Allison Buccola - Available

Catch Her When She Falls

A Novel

by Allison Buccola
Frankie Corzo
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 2 copies available
In this “propulsive” (Kimberly McCreight) debut thriller, a young woman questions everything she thought she knew about the shocking murder that changed her life when she was in high school.

“Wildly suspenseful and almost gothic in tone.”—BookPage
Ten years ago, my boyfriend killed my best friend.
When Micah Wilkes was a senior in high school, her boyfriend was convicted of murdering her best friend, Emily, a star ballerina with a bright future. A decade later, Micah has finally moved on from the unforgivable betrayal and loss. Now the owner of a bustling coffee shop in her small hometown in Pennsylvania, she’s happily coupled up with another old high school friend, the two having bonded over their shared sorrow.
But when reminders of her past begin appearing at her work and home, Micah begins to doubt what she knows about Emily’s death. Questions raised on a true crime blog and in an online web sleuthing forum force her to reexamine her memories of that fateful night. She told the truth to the investigators on the case, but was there another explanation for Emily’s murder? A stranger in the woods. An obsessive former classmate. A domineering ballet instructor. Or the internet’s favorite suspect: Joshua, Emily’s outcast younger brother who hasn’t been seen since his sister’s death.
As Micah delves deeper into the case, she feels her grip on reality loosening, her behavior growing more and more secretive and unhinged. As she races to piece together the truth about that night ten years ago, Micah grapples with how things could have gone so wrong and wonders whether she, too, might be next to disappear.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 1, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593555965
      • File size: 347091 KB
      • Duration: 12:03:06

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 22, 2021
      Micah Wilkes, the narrator of Buccola’s promising if uneven debut, remains imprisoned by the past a decade after she helped convict her high school boyfriend, Alex Swift, of killing her best friend, Emily Winters, with whom he’d secretly been cheating. Now 27, Micah is living in her insular hometown of Calvary, Pa., running a coffee shop, dating one of Alex’s closest buds from high school, and having increasingly triggering run-ins with Alex’s current girlfriend, Julia Reynolds, an unprepossessing legal secretary spearheading the campaign to overturn his conviction. Initially dismissing this effort as Julia’s ploy to make herself indispensable to Alex, Micah comes to have unsettling doubts after reading online discussions citing such deficiencies in the case as the absence of forensic evidence and the perfunctory police investigation—enough that she starts digging herself. Though Emily and Alex are underdeveloped, and the novel bogs down at times in the minutiae of Micah’s day-to-day, some startling twists and troubling questions concerning guilt and justice await those who stay the course. Psychological thriller fans will be curious to see what Buccola does next. Agent: Julia Kenny, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      At the very beginning of this audiobook, protagonist Micah Wilkes tells listeners, "Ten years ago, my boyfriend killed my best friend." But did he? What ensues is a retelling of the events that led up to Emily's death and subsequent efforts by various friends and amateur sleuths to identify the killer. Sadly, the story is told from Micah's point of view, and she's neither likable nor trustworthy. Narrator Frankie Corzo tries to bring her to life, but Corzo's efforts are unconvincing; there's simply too much focus on one character's reliving of one cataclysmic event. Very little else happens, so a lot depends on a stellar denouement. Alas, it is both disappointing and improbable, leaving listeners wondering if spending the time on this novel was worth the investment. L.W.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2022

      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. VERDICT Not recommended.--Stephanie Klose

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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