Arrowood: A Novel

Arrowood is the story of Arden, a troubled young woman who has recently inherited her childhood home in southern Iowa. When she was eight, her two-year-old twin sisters went missing, never to be seen again. Now as Arden returns, all those memories and nightmares from that fateful day come flooding back. She meets Josh Kyle, who has a website that’s dedicated to unsolved cases and he’s determined to solve hers. What secrets will they discover together?

I cannot praise this book enough. It draws you in to the point you felt like someone you loved had disappeared and you’re haunted by it. Laura McHugh did a brilliant job of showing us that our lives can be shaped by our memories and that those are not always as accurate as we would believe. She even adds little bits of the supernatural without making it seem like a ghost story. Sometimes things happen to us and we interpret them as signs or the possibility of someone communicating with us.

This was a great story of how we create stories to understand our past and to hide or forget the secrets we keep. It is a perfect example of how far people will go to keep their reputation. Sometimes the people closest to us have the biggest secrets.