Everything We Didn’t Say

Juniper (June) Baker grew up in a small Iowa town that she longed to escape. The summer before college, she begins a secret romance with her best friend’s love interest, and her impressions of the town take on a sinister note. The seemingly random harassment of a local couple, Beth and Cal Murphy, escalates to a brutal murder, with June’s brother accused of the crime. Then June discovers she is pregnant and gives birth before being whisked off to college as her family takes over raising her daughter. Fifteen years later, June comes home to help a dying friend but also to solve the murders. She learns that someone is working on a podcast of the unsolved crime. Can June assuage her guilt at all that she didn’t do and say so many years ago and begin anew with the child she left behind, or are some truths better left buried? Baart (Little Broken Things) is a master storyteller, and the alternating chapters between past and present wonderfully tease out the order of events, helping the reader piece this twisted puzzle together. June’s teenage romance is poignant and bittersweet, adding to the feeling of impending doom that saturates the novel.