If She Did It by Jessica Treadway

Hanna and Joe Schutt are unsure about their awkward daughter Dawn’s first love, the handsome yet unnerving Rud, but are pleased to see their daughter happy – until the night they are viciously beaten by a croquet mallet in bed, leaving Joe dead and Hanna with facial injuries so acute that they leave her, nearly three years later, still with visible scars and a brain injury that impedes her memory of the night. So when Rud, jailed for the attack, wins an appeal, Hanna needs to try to recall what really happened that night so that she can put him back behind bars. She must also defy those around her, even her best friend and other daughter, Iris , who both insist that the killer was not Rud at all, but someone much closer to her heart.

I think I’ve considered, in the past, that memory loss in books often feels contrived, but Treadway’s skill as an author – she’s a creative writing professor –never made me feel like Hanna’s injury was cheap. No, she did not want to remember the day her beloved husband died, but she never seemed to be actively pushing it away. Likewise, when Dawn does things that arouse suspicion, Hanna does not dismiss them without consideration, but asks questions, fights back, and searches for reality in a world split apart. She wants her daughter, long adored despite being maligned at school for her lazy eye and slight oddness, to love her, to be loved, to shake off everyone’s view of her, and to be happy. Dawn or not, someone is a threat to Hanna’s life now, and she needs to break into her own mind to find out who it is. This is a stay-up-late, stare-at-your-child-suspiciously-the-next-day thriller.


Fiona Hardy