Published by Storm Publishing, 2024, 352 pages.

Two perfect suburban families: Lorrie and Ed, and their children Knox, Archie and Chloé; and Eden and Witt, and their daughter Summer. Summer and Knox, both seniors in high school, are dating. Lorrie and Eden—who are very close friends—joke about the children getting married and becoming each other’s in-laws.

But nothing is ever quite as perfect as it seems. Summer loves Knox but when they start having sex, she knows something is wrong. In the end, the situation gets out of control.

One day, Jules—the woman Summer babysits for—calls Eden to say that she is with Summer in the hospital. When Eden rushes there, she finds out that Knox has raped Summer. She gets her daughter out of the hospital before they can do any tests. Eden has been through this herself—she was raped when she was younger—and remembers the endless questions she was asked by the police, all of whom were men. It is not an experience she wants Summer to go through.

The repercussions from the rape ripple out. Lorrie and Eden are very close, in a way they are not with anyone else. How will the rape affect their friendship? And how will the parents deal with it?

Lorrie initially finds it hard to believe that Knox could do something like this. The parents do not want to involve the police, but the hospital reports the rape. When Knox is taken in for questioning, Ed immediately hires a lawyer, whom Lorrie does not like or trust, especially because Ed refuses to tell her how he knows him. As far as Ed is concerned, it is all about getting Knox off—whether he actually raped Summer is not the issue. Lorrie begins to realize that she really does not know her husband anymore.

The characters are nuanced and complex. You get the narrative from various points of view: Eden, Lorrie, Summer, Knox, Jules and Archie. This gives them the space to develop, to tell their own stories.

Caitlin Weaver handles the issue of the rape with sensitivity: the trauma, the gossip, the emotional scars, and the way it can affect everything. Rape is bad enough, but rape by someone close to you is worse. And especially when you are in high school, on the cusp of adulthood. Before long, everyone knows what has happened, and the kids in the school take sides. Summer has been traumatized, but going back to school for her last week is much harder than she had imagined.

I liked the fact that we also get Knox’s point of view. He is good-looking, popular and a sports hero. But he is hiding a secret that he cannot share with anyone. He needs help; however, with Archie already seeing a therapist, he figures that “there was only room in our family for one damaged child”. So he pretends he is fine. I started out by being furious with him but in the end, began to understand him. There is one person in this book who comes across as nasty, and that person is not Knox.

You also get a sense of the politics that play out in the suburbs, the gossiping, who is in and who is not, and how it can all change in a moment. Jules, as Paul’s second wife, is snubbed by the women. He had left his wife—who was a friend of the women—when he found out Jules was pregnant. But because he decides to stay in the home he had shared with his first wife, Jules has to try and fit into his old life, which is difficult at best.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure about the changing points of view: the first chapter is from Lorrie’s perspective, and before I got to know her, we had moved on to Eden. But as the book progresses, the characters become very distinct, and I found it impossible to put down.

This is essentially a novel about relationships in all their complexity, especially the friendship between Lorrie and Eden. And about women finding their voice.