Tessa Cartwright has always been regarded as one of the lucky ones. At sixteen she was found, barely alive, in a grave with three other unidentified bodies under a blanket of flowers. Her testimony helped put her killer behind bars, and, since then, Tessa has been pursued by the press.
As an adult, Tessa has, in some ways, put the past behind her. She has a teenage daughter and has a career as an artist. Then she is left a gift – flowers, of the type that were found in her grave, planted under her window. Tessa becomes convinced, with a short time before her convicted killer’s execution, that the wrong man has been imprisoned and that the real perpetrator of these horrific crimes remains at large.
I was really excited about this story, and was looking forward to seeing how events panned out.
The writer alternates the narrative point of view between Tessa at sixteen and Tessa in the present. This did make it quite hard work to feel how the story was moving forward at times. I never quite got the feeling of understanding the character as I would have liked, though I think this is part of the fashion for unreliable narrators. I also felt that there were one or two characters/incidents that seem to have been included simply to make the end viable.
By the end of the novel some of the details had been hinted at enough to stop it feeling completely satisfying. There were also some details about Tessa’s best friend of the time that I felt could have warranted further exploration. All in all, this promised a lot and had some good elements but it just fell short for me.