The Book:
Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams
Published June 15th 2021 by William Morrow
Date read: June 15, 2021
The Characters:
Lena and her twin sister Cambry
Officer Raymond Raycevic
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge sixty miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version.
But Lena isn’t buying it.
Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body.
Corporal Raymond Raycevic has agreed to meet Lena at the scene. He is sympathetic, forthright, and professional. But his story doesn’t seem to add up. For one thing, he stopped Cambry for speeding a full hour before she supposedly leapt to her death. Then there are the sixteen attempted 911 calls from her cell phone, made in what was unfortunately a dead zone.
But perhaps most troubling of all, the state trooper is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. I couldn’t live with it. Hopefully you can, Officer Raycevic.
Lena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing, tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival—one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself.
The Ending:
Cambry really had been dating Ray. It was actually Ray’s brother, though, who took Ray’s spot after Ray killed himself. Their father Theo was a serial killer, and Ray had been cleaning up after him and hiding his crimes for years. He had murdered Cambry after she found out the truth.
Ray confessed, Lena transmitted his confession over walkie-talkie to her blog followers, and Lena got away from him and Theo.
The Review:
There’s not a lot you can say about a book that takes place over just three hours without getting into spoilers!
I love this author’s semi-closed-room mysteries. It was so cool that this whole story took place within a few hours in one location, and that Adams can weave such a tangled web out of just a few characters. I love how gory and violent they are–not for everyone for sure, but similar to Karin Slaughter, I really enjoy what he can do with the gruesomeness.
I had no idea whose story to believe as I listened to this one, but was hooked and turned it up to 3x speed to find out the truth about what happened to Cambry as quickly as possible. My only complaint about this audiobook was that this narrator’s Irish accent was not good!
Overall I think I enjoyed No Exit more, but this was still an entertaining thriller that I would certainly recommend.
Follow me on Bloglovin’!
