Glamorous messiah or charlatan? A mask of beauty hides deadly secrets in #1 New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author Gregg Olsen’s mesmerizing novel of suspense. In the Pacific Northwest, police officer Lindsay Jackman is investigating the murder of a young journalist found at the bottom of a ravine. Lindsay soon learns that the victim was writing an exposé. Her subject: a charismatic wellness guru who’s pulled millions into her euphoric orbit… To hear Marnie Spellman tell it, when she was a child, a swarm of bees lifted her off the ground and toward the sunlight, illuming her spiritual connection with nature—an uncanny event on which Marnie built a cosmetics empire and became a legend, a healer, and the queen of holistic health and eternal beauty. In her inner circle is an intimate band of devotees called the Hive. They share Marnie’s secrets of success—including one cloaked in darkness for twenty years. Determined to uncover the possibly deadly mysteries of the group, Lindsay focuses her investigation on Marnie and the former members of the Hive, who are just as determined to keep Lindsay from their secrets as they are to maintain their status.
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Okay so I LOVED this book, absolute 5 star before the ending, which did unfortunately fall a bit short.
To start with the good stuff: I've read a lot of mixed POV/time periods, but it's always been primarily split in two. Here, I lost track of how many different perspectives and times were covered, and because it jumped around so much it was really challenging to tie different things together, which definitely kept me engaged throughout even when pieces of the mystery became apparent. Honestly I considered picking up a pen and paper a few times just to build out an actual timeline and have a character sheet or something, which I've rarely felt a need to do. I've seen some reviews complain that the detective didn't have a heavy enough role, or the pace wasn't fast/thrilling enough, but I found it pretty delightful feeling already so far in the thick of it and yet only being a third of the way through and knowing I had a lot to look forward to. And I do feel new interesting things continued coming up in each chapter and would happily read something like this again!
I did feel let down by the ending, but mostly because it was *so* close to being right and having everything fit perfectly in place, just executed poorly. In particular, the scene describing the moment of Sarah's murder actually made absolutely no sense because the pacing and motivations were entirely unbelievable (even though the groundwork and foreshadowing had been laid well!), and the revelation about details of what happened at another key moment (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers) contradicted an early chapter, even though both had the same POV. Also, just wish there was more of a tell-all about what on earth Marnie was doing all along, for my curiosity alone. Still, I do think this is a book worth reading if you're in the mood for something culty and weird and complicated to unravel!
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