My decision fatigue is taking me into new reading territory this year, which has been great because I’m not overthinking my next book and it has pushed me to read different types of stories. This week’s unanticipated read was a suspenseful mystery tinged with the paranormal called Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin. The paranormal elements I craved were not as prevalent, but I found a way to enjoy chasing down clues with an unyielding scientist guided by ghosts both old and new.
Vivvy Bouchet is back in her Texas hometown to bury her mother and not get involved with an infamous cold case. Vivvy is already stretched thin with a funeral, a disintegrating relationship with her sister, and a boss breathing down her neck about the expectations from their grant. But she is weak when it comes to Mike, her childhood friend, who begs Vivvy to use her psychic abilities and find clues in a missing child’s case. Three-year-old Lizzie Solomon disappeared from her house over a decade ago, and the mayor wants it closed to help his re-election. Unfortunately for Vivvy, her one favor for Mike creates even more difficulties when she’s paired with cop Jesse Sharp. He is not pleased that a psychic is on the case, but as much as Vivvy wants to remove herself from the narrative, she cannot ignore the ghostly visitations that urge her forward.
For a book that features a psychic medium, the paranormal elements in this story are subdued. The story would be more interesting if the paranormal was a driving force in the case, and Vivvy would be a more dynamic character who juggled the contradictions of science and the mystic. Instead of creating paranormal leads and visions to push Vivvy forward, Night Will Find You blurs the lines between her gifts and her ability to get answers by instigating everyone involved in the case. I have no doubt that Vivvy can see ghosts or catch glimpses of their messages, but Haeberlin creates uncertainty about whether or not Vivvy’s psychic skills are helping her uncover the mystery. Vivvy is great at stirring the pot with the insights she gleans, but she also has a bullish nature that helps her get information. I was expecting a mystery that leaned more heavily on the spooky, but I appreciate the ways Heaberlin uses the paranormal elements to muddle reality.
The strongest element of this story is our protagonist Vivvy Bouchet. The mystery is interesting for the most part, but I was tracking the psychic scientist with a lot of baggage. Her mother recently passed, she’s got unresolved issues with her childhood friend, she gets dragged into a case with an intense Texas cop, and a conspiracy podcaster is bringing her unconventional childhood into the spotlight. At times, the story seems more focused on Vivvy working through her stuff than it does on the mystery, but this was fine with me because I was more interested in learning what she was going to do next anyway.
While Vivvy tries to solve the case, she also uncovers information from Sharp about another missing girl’s case. This becomes a subplot meant to keep Vivvy wary of the cop’s true nature, but I found it way more intriguing than the main case. Sharp became the mystery I wanted to unravel the most, and his ghosts kept popping up throughout the book and distracting me from the main task at hand. I personally wanted to learn more about Sharp because Vivvy already has an idea of what happened in the original cold case and is only trying to uncover the “how,” but Sharp’s mystery is a huge unknown that had a lot of undiscovered terrain.
The ghosts are few and far in between the pages of Night Will Find You, but if you like thrillers, you will get wrapped up in the many mysterious layers of Vivvy Bouchet’s life.
Rating: Night Will Find You – 7.0/10
-Brandee
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. The thoughts on this story are my own.
