A Review of ‘Come Join The Murder’ by Holly Rae Garcia

‘Come Join The Murder’ is a highly unusual, and exceptionally assured novel debut from Holly Rae Garcia. Her ultra-smooth prose is pitch-perfect and her dialogue engaging and faultless. There is an understated elegance to her writing, which may lull you into a false sense of security at the beginning of the story, leaving you utterly unprepared for the torrent of horror that is to come.

The story racks up the tension relentlessly as Rebecca Crow discovers her husband is missing, and her beloved son has drowned, under very suspicious circumstances. Consumed by guilt for not replacing the spare tyre in the family car, she blames herself for their demise. Lost in a nightmare of grief and despair, Rebecca cannot function in the world; her personality disintegrates as she no longer knows who she is, or how to live:

“The realization that Oliver was gone didn’t come in the heart-wrenching moment she saw his small arm draped on the back seat of Jon’s car. It didn’t even come at the funeral, when his pale little body lay surrounded by cold white silk. Rather, it came in the million little things that built up around her and swallowed her whole until she found herself in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by emptiness, and no idea how she had gotten there.”

Rebecca is on the verge of drowning, both psychically and metaphorically, when her survival instinct kicks in. She knows the only way forward is to fix her problems; choosing a route that is both foolhardy and deadly dangerous. It is too simple to say that Rebecca turns into a vigilante; her quest is much more personal and primal than merely balancing the scales. What starts as a coping mechanism rapidly descends into an obsessive compulsion, over which she has no control…

A fantastic roller coaster ride of revenge and retribution!