Jackal

I received a digital advance copy of Jackal by Erin E. Adams via NetGalley. Jackal is scheduled for release on October 4, 2022.

When Liz was in high school, she was present at the taking of a black girl in the forest outside her white rust belt town. Liz was injured during the event, but remembers nothing more than a flash of teeth and her best friend leading her out of the woods. Now she is back in town for the wedding of her best friend. At the reception, another black girl is taken while Liz is supposed to be watching. Now Liz is desperately hunting for the young girl and working to remember what she really saw all those years ago. As she searches, Liz uncovers more about the history of her town, one filled with the disappearance of young black girls.

The strength of this novel is the mystery of the woods. There is a myth in the town warning kids that if they hear a strange sound in the woods, they didn’t. They should never look at things that appear in the corner of their eye. They should beware of anyone that calls their name. As a reader, I was full of questions about the origins of this myth and its connection to the disappearances. Was it something supernatural? Was it a serial killer? These questions kept me very invested in the story, as I wanted to understand what was happening.

The last third or so of the book did get a bit bumpy in terms of writing. I found myself a bit confused in places, not quite following what was happening, or how the plot points linked together. But because I was already invested, I was able to hang in there through the end. While I did still have some questions at the end of the novel, the pieces came together enough for me get the gist of the truth of the woods.

As a character, Liz is well developed. We get a sense of her past in the town, and her own lack of understanding of what she experienced. As she learns the truths of her past that she had overlooked, we learn more about her. The characters around Liz were a bit more blurry for me. I didn’t feel that we got to know any of them particularly well, and I would have loved more connection with them.

Overall, Jackal does a great job merging the story of a somewhat mythical wood with the racial conflict of the people around it.