05/08/2023
Bestseller Hall’s arresting if problematically plotted latest (after We Lie Here) centers on Coco Weber, who has spent much of her life dealing with death. At 15, Coco’s parents and older brother were murdered in their Catalina Island home; after college, she became an obituary writer for the Los Angeles Times. The sudden end of her marriage and her career 19 years after the murders force the fragile journalist back to Catalina, where the house she inherited and a fresh obit gig at the local paper await. Immediately, though, Coco is slammed from all sides: there’s venom from her Aunt Gwen, who’s been living in the now ramshackle family home and considers it hers to keep; the release of the man convicted of killing her family, who’s been exonerated by DNA evidence; and what seems a disproportionate number of elderly women’s obituaries to write. Despite the ages of her subjects, Coco suspects they may have been murdered, and that their deaths might be connected to her own family tragedy. While Coco and her aunt are complex, convincing characters, the other major players prove little more than game pieces in a plot that careens into preposterousness around its climactic twists. Hall manages plenty of intrigue, but the results are uneven. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Aug.)
The range exhibited in narrator Kristen Ariza's performance of this thriller is unparalleled. She shines at voicing Coco Weber's conflicting emotions as she escapes L.A. and returns home to remote Catalina Island.… Ariza allows something as simple as a cell phone ringing to amplify the suspenseful ambiance of this audiobook. When Coco receives threats to her own life, Ariza embodies her determination to get to the bottom of all the deaths—past and present.” —AudioFile Magazine
“Original, compelling, memorable, What Never Happened by novelist Rachel Howzell Hall will have a very special interest for fans of crime fiction in general, and deftly crafted murder mysteries in particular.” —Midwest Book Review
“Howzell Hall specializes in complex, realistic characters…What Never Happened gives a unique look at the domestic thriller.” —Florida Sun Sentinel
“Rachel Howzell Hall does it again. What Never Happened blends blade-sharp writing and indelible characters with a suspenseful story that pulls you in and won’t let go, as a seeming paradise grows dark with storms, suspicion, and murder. I couldn’t put it down.” —Meg Gardiner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“What Never Happened opens with a gut punch and doesn’t let up from there. Rachel Howzell Hall’s twist on the you-can’t-go-home-again story is smart, dizzying, and thrilling. She not only handles the mystery elements expertly, but she honors the grief and rage of our past and present.” —Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Pallbearers Club
“Rachel Howzell Hall has crafted her own genre of slow-boiling, powerfully emotional thrillers. Her realistic characters are ordinary people, haunted by past horrors that won’t stay buried, forcing them to face pure evil to find their own redemption.” —Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“In What Never Happened, Rachel Howzell Hall seamlessly weaves together the past and the present, decorating her breakneck plot with dark secrets and unexpected reveals that glitter like jewels. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.” —Jess Lourey, Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Quarry Girls
“What Never Happened is superb. Beautifully and smartly written, it is an engrossing thriller with an ending that will leave your head spinning. It is deliciously creepy and perfectly crafted. In a word, stunning! Don’t miss this one!” —Lisa Regan, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author
“Rachel Howzell Hall’s What Never Happened is a spine-tingling twist of a roller coaster that keeps you on the edge of your seat to the very last page and will have you saying ‘Thanks a lot, Rachel, for my lack of sleep.’” —Yasmin Angoe, award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Nena Knight series, Her Name Is Knight and They Come at Knight
2023-06-08
A girl’s life is forever altered when her family is murdered.
Back in 2001, Colette “Coco” Weber and her family were among the very few Black residents of Avalon on California’s Santa Catalina Island. Her mother, a lawyer, and her father, a teacher at the island’s high school, had tired of commuting from the mainland. Coco was a teen looking for adventure when she came home one night to find entirely too much of it: Her parents and her brother, a football star, were all dead. Nineteen years later, Coco, at odds with her actor husband, Micah, returns to Avalon to work on the local paper owned by her college friend Maddy, where she writes offbeat obituaries. Then she learns that the man who was convicted of murdering her family is being released on new DNA evidence. Although she’s inherited her parents’ Avalon house, it’s been occupied by her aunt Gwen, who, thinking of it as her own, switches between loving and hostile. The house is a mess, but Coco, who’s liberated a valuable ring from Micah, plans to use the proceeds from its sale to fix up the place. Soon she’s receiving racist threats and offers to buy her home that make her equally furious. Slowly a pattern emerges: elderly widows who own their own homes have been found dead in unexpected places, the police writing off each case as a natural death. Only her fellow reporter and soon-to-be lover, handsome, rich Noah Bancroft, believes in Coco’s idea that a serial killer is at work. Troubled by panic attacks and her inability to discern what’s real in either past or present, Coco seeks the truth as Covid ravages California.
A character-rich, sleep-depriving thriller.
