That Weekend by Kara Thomas, 2021

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Three best friends, a lake house, a secret trip - what could go wrong?
It was supposed to be the perfect prom weekend getaway. But it's clear something terrible happened when Claire wakes up alone and bloodied on a hiking trail with no memory of the past forty-eight hours.
Three went up the mountain, but only one came back.
Now everyone wants answers - most of all, Claire. She remembers Friday night, but after that... nothing. And now Kat and Jesse - her best friends - are missing.
That weekend changes everything.
What happened on the mountain? And where are Kat and Jesse? Claire knows the answers are buried somewhere in her memory, but as she's learning, everyone has secrets - even her best friends. And she's pretty sure she's not going to like what she remembers.

(336 pages)

I just set down That Weekend and I'm speechless. It's stirred up a lot of emotions and bad memories, that's for sure. When I was a college freshman, a classmate of mine disappeared on a night out drinking with friends. I helped the searchers for a while, distributing flyers and giving food and drink to the search and rescue people. It was a terrible time, and I'm still haunted sometimes by those memories.

That's why the first half of this book hit me really hard. Claire's desperation when she realizes her friends are missing, and the frenzied ever-shifting search effort to find them, hit too close to home. The crazy conspiracy theories, the stacks of "missing" posters. The latching on to every shred of evidence that might lead somewhere. I was less invested in the mystery portions, just because they didn't strike that nerve quite as much (plus I was more just frustrated with the authority figures more than anything), but I think they were still well done. And overall the early part of the story just hits a very true-to-life desperate, chaotic energy.

I can't speak first-hand to Claire's mental health struggles after the accident, but they seemed pretty realistic to me at least. The smaller touches, like the way she lashes out at her mother when she's most frustrated and the way she obsessively googles every aspect of the case every single day, are exactly the sort of things I think I'd do in her situation.

The narrative shifts in the second half of the book as things pick up speed again. Not gonna lie, I was less invested in the second half. And in many ways it felt a bit less grounded and realistic as it went along. But things definitely stayed interesting, and I genuinely never had any idea what was going to happen next.

I think if I could change one thing about this book, I would get rid of at least one love interest for Claire. It feels like every single guy in Claire's life either is, or used to be, an object of romantic infatuation. After a while it just got a bit distracting.

This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart. Most of the plot twists are deeply disturbing, and that's on top of a baseline level of foul language and references to teenagers having sex. I can't discuss the rest of the mature content without getting close to spoilers, but I can say that the last few chapters make me a bit nauseous. I can tell That Weekend is going to stay with me for at least a few days, and not necessarily in a good way.

If this is a genre you're into, then I recommend this book. I think it's a good book. It just isn't necessarily for everyone and you have to be aware of that going in.