Absolutely loved this book! Here are my thoughts below :)

Pros (I have NO cons, which is crazy)

✰ The synopsis got me hooked right away - I've never even heard of a book that even seems remotely similar to this
✰ The writing style is so unique & interesting - I loved that we got the killer's POV, which is rare
✰ I was genuinely enjoying everyone's POV, it's impossible for me to compare whose I liked best
✰ Some pretty crazy twists that left me shook
✰ Honestly some of the most powerful quotes I've ever read are in this book - If you want to read something that makes you question how you think & how you view life, then this is the book for you

Overall Thoughts

There are very few books that have blown me away & left me speechless, & this is definitely one of them. It's just one of those books that you won't forget, breaks your heart, & is just all around beautiful. Definitely will re-read this again in the future & would recommend to literally anyone, especially true crime lovers.

4 stars

This book was so unique in both the premise and the way it handled the topic of the death penalty and crime. I loved the nuances and different perspectives the author brought in, as well as the various ways the women we follow were involved/related to these awful crimes.

* you have always believed that pity is the most offensive of feelings. Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy. Pity strips you bare. Pity shrinks.
* This was how it always went, wasn’t it? All those women who’d come before her… It was a wonder how she’d never given much thought to the ancient, timeless fact. Motherhood was, by nature, a thing you did alone.
* Lavender had not wondered-had not even questioned-whether a choice was a thing that could ravage.
* It was like she’d held her own desire too long in the palm of her hand and it was now just an object, devoid of meaning, useless and taking up space.
* Lavender’s decisions did not feel like decisions-more like flakes of ash, settled on her shoulders.
* It was the sort of hatred that lurked in the shallows, gnashing its jaws, the ugliest thing about being herself. She reached, cradling, and welcomed it in.
* Seventeen, and the world had new edges. The corners were cruel, too sharp, and you spent hours on the musty couch in that trailer, digging around in the stew of yourself.
* Joy is a cousin of love, you read once. If you cannot feel love, there is at least this weaker relative, tantalizing in memory…
* Morality is not fixed. It’s fluid, ever-changing.
Sometimes you are certain this is all you are made of: a fleeting instant between action and inaction. Doing something, or not. Where is the difference, you wonder? where is the choice. Where is the line, between stillness and motion?
* For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit evil to exist at all.
* The incident lived inside her, a private bubble of shame that she poked on her worst days, just to see if it had changed shape. It never did.
* This day was about love, but Saffy had always been more interested in power. The black and pulsing heart of it. Power was the clink of her badge against the kitchen counter. It was the heft of the gun at her waist…Saffy wondered about her own internal compass, the needle that kept her on this path, stopped her from wandering or regressing or giving up entirely. It scared her to realize there was no compass. There were only days and the choices she made within them.
* The past was a thing you could open like a box, gaze down on with starry eyes. But it was too dangerous to step inside.
* The job was getting to her. Not the bodies, or the missing children, or the rampant opioids. It was this. Men like Lawson, who believed their very existences afforded them lawlessness. Men who had been handed the world, trashed it, and still demanded more.
* She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside— some just controlled it better than other. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.
* Forgiveness is flimsy. Forgiveness is like a square of warm sun on the carpet. You’d like to curl up in it, feel its temporary comfort—but forgiveness will not change you. Forgiveness will not bring you back.
* It should matter, the distance between your desire and your actions. It should matter that you wanted to love Jenny…You did not want to kill her.
* Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long Hazel forgot her own legs. It was a shock of blinding sun. A burst of remembering: sandals on pavement, a sleepy back seat, nails painted on the bathroom floor. Grief was a loneliness that felt like a planet.
* She let a wave of grief engulf her, then pass…when you see a wave, you have to make a choice… either swim against it or ride it home.
* …touched the place where Ansel’s hurt had congealed—only to find his pain looked just like everyone else’s. The difference lay in what he chose to do with it.
* It was impossible to think about the lies she could have lived without thinking of those she could have saved. So Saffy decided not to consider them at all. From that moment forward, she would forget that tempting almost-world; there was only this, a brief and imperfect and singular reality. She would have to find a way to live it.
* It seemed, then, that mothering did not have to be so rigid. There was no arc to it, no frame through which it ended or began. Mothering could be as simple as this: a woman and her very own blood, breathing in tandem through the darkest heart of the night.
* (When asked why she attended the execution of her uncle): “I only knew the good person. The person he could have been. Those other universes-I guess I want to honor them”
* Those seconds. You want to hold on to each one, to feel the texture of your life as it slinks regretfully away.
* There would be no story, for these girls alone. There would be no vigil, no attention at all. They are relevant because of Ansel and the fascination the world has for men like him.
* Justice is supposed to be an anchor, an answer. She wonders how a concept like justice made it into the human psyche, how she ever believed that something so abstract could be labeled, meted out. Justice does not feel like compensation. It does not even feel like satisfaction. As Saffy takes a long breath of alpine air, she pictures the needle, pressing into Ansel’s arm. The blue pop of vein. How unnecessary, she thinks. How pointless. The system has failed them all.
* But it feels backward. Almost like a gift to Ansel. He gets the attention. He gets the media, the discourse, the carefully regulated procedure. Real punishment would look different, Hazel knows—like a lonely, epic nothing. A life sentence in a men’s prison, the years rotting as they pass. The long forgetting of his name.
* Usually Izzy-the real Izzy-is invisible beneath the shadow of what happened to her. The tragedy is that she is dead, but the tragedy is also that she belongs to him. The bad man, who did the bad thing. There are millions of other moments Izzy has lived, but he has eaten them up one by one, until she exists in most memories as a summation of that awful second, distilled constantly in her fear, her pain, the brutal fact.
* Welcome, little one, Jenny would have whispered into each precious seashell ear. You’ll see. It’s good here.