ARC Review: Dark Road Home by Anna Carlisle

The Dark Road Home
Author: Anna Carlisle
Series: A Gin Sullivan Mystery
Publication: Crooked Lane Books (July 12, 2016)

Description: The summer after she graduated from high school, Gin Sullivan's little sister Lily went missing. Her family fell apart, not to mention her relationship with her high school sweetheart, Jake. Now, almost twenty years later, Gin is living in Chicago and working as a medical examiner when she gets the call. A body's been found in the woods outside her small hometown. It could be her sister. After all these years, it's time for Gin to go home and face the demons she tried to leave behind.

Confronting your past is never easy, but for Gin it also means confronting Jake, who was the prime suspect in Lily's disappearance. To find an answer to the question of what happened to her sister that fateful summer, Gin makes the difficult decision to use her talents as a medical examiner to help the police investigation. But as Gin gets deeper into the case, she uncovers a shocking truth that could change everything, if it doesn't destroy what's left of her and her family first.

Buried secrets come to light in Dark Road Home, Anna Carlisle's sharp and simmering debut mystery.

My Thoughts: Gin Sullivan is called back home to the town where she grew up when the body of her younger sister is discovered.

Lily disappeared just at the end of Gin senior year in high school. Her disappearance caused all sorts of changes. Gin fled to Chicago for college, medical school, and for her work as a pathologist for Cook County. She has been keeping herself busy so that she doesn't have to think about the unanswered questions but nothing keeps her from feeling empty. Another casualty of Lily's  disappearance was Gin's estrangement with her first love Jake. Some things led Gin to lose faith and trust in him.

Jake had his life disrupted too. He has been the focus of the town's suspicions that he killed Lily since he was the last to be seen with her. Now all the old feelings are coming back with the discovery of Lily's body buried in a cooler that the gang had claimed during their summers up at the water tower.

The suspects range from Jake to Tom who was Lily's boyfriend to both Gin's father and Tom's father. The gang consisted of Gin and Lily and Tom and Christine with the later addition of Jake. Gin's father and Tom and Christine's father were working together to establish a medical clinic. They grew up together and were like brother and sister until Tom and Lily fell in love. But after the tragedy, they all drifted apart.

I was engrossed in this mystery as I tried to figure out what had happened to Lily and who caused her disappearance. Gin was an interesting character who needed to confront her own demons and her own trust issues in order to solve the case.

Favorite Quote:

"But I do know that what people want now is answers. That's just human nature, when something like this happens. Our hearts aren't big enough for the grief, is the way I've come to see it after all these years on the job. And so we do the next best thing: we start looking for answers, trying to find someone to blame, so we can understand."

I got this eARC from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.