What Happened to Nina by Dervla McTiernan is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s engrossing from start to finish, playing out two scenarios, either of which could be construed as a parent’s worst nightmare, and leading to an ending that made me sit and think for quite a while.
I don’t know what I would have done, if I were Leanne in that moment. I simply don’t. And that’s part of the power of this character study of how two sets of parents react to the unthinkable.
The story opens with Nina, a twenty-year-old college student spending the weekend at her rich boyfriend’s second home which is isolated in the mountains. We learn quickly that while the couple has known each other since childhood, and have been dating for a while, the relationship has turned dark. There’s a particularly haunting scene where Nina is examining her slender body in the mirror. It’s covered with bruises, and not all of them were caused by the rock climbing mishap that occurred earlier that day. The chapter ends with Nina’s decision to confront Simon with the news that their relationship is over. And this is the last we hear from her.
The story then alternates among the viewpoints of Nina’s parents and Simon’s parents as they navigate the landscape of what has happened. And herein lies the strength of the book, because their reactions and actions are absolutely believable, justified in their own minds, and sympathetic. We feel for all four of the parents, in different ways.
There are two camps of parents here: the parents of the girl who disappeared, and the parents of the boy she was dating. On the former side, there’s Leanne, Nina’s mother–a fiercely independent woman who built her own inn from the ground up. During a search effort on the grounds of Simon’s parents’ home in Stowe and upon learning of a development that implicates Simon, Leanne hauls off and attacks him. She’s a trapped animal, impotent to help or find her daughter. There’s Andy, Leanne’s husband and Nina’s step-father, harassed as a pedophile and pervert after Internet trolls engage in wild speculation. This is while he deals with the horror of losing Nina, an incompetent and uncaring principal who is uninterested in protecting his other daughter, and a wife who appears to be descending into madness in her grief.
Then there are the parents of the boy who was last seen with Nina. Their reaction is more complicated, because their child isn’t blameless. Simon’s father’s animal instinct to protect his own takes over. Rory will never forgive himself for what he does, but if he doesn’t act, the alternative is knowing his son’s life is effectively over.
Rory is a good provider rather than a good father, and even that can cut the other way. Simon is spoiled, entitled. Rory is not a bad man, not truly, but he does bad things in this book. He does them for his boy, even if his boy is a sociopath.
Jamie is Rory’s resourceful trophy wife and Simon’s mother. Accepting as a matter of fact that Rory will leave her, she re-sells the couture clothing he buys her for, secretly amassing well over a million dollars in anticipation of that day. She is much more multi-faceted than one would suspect, with more in common with Leanne than either woman knows. Perhaps if they did know, the very ending of this book would have been different.
This book is of a indeterminate genre. It had me on the edge of my seat–-I finished it in three days-–but it’s not truly a thriller, or a mystery. We know exactly what happened to Nina, and we’re watching how the events unfold towards the end of resolution and/or discovery. It is a thriller in the sense that we race to the end, wanting closure and wanting justice, but this book is more character-driven. This might disappoint those who enter the experience expecting a thriller, that maybe Nina will pop up, Gone Girl-style, halfway in. She doesn’t. That is not this book.
It is unfortunate that the cover doesn’t give the book the service it deserves. It’s not simply that it’s not eye-catching; it also has little to do with what this book is about or how we see Nina. Please, please, do not judge a book by a cover, or you will pass this extraordinary book by.
Sarah Reida is the author of NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, a dark comedy thriller about a killer targeting the morally bankrupt residents of an upscale neighborhood, which will be out in April. Click here to learn more about Sarah, follow her on Instagram, and click here to enter to win a copy of her novel on Goodreads.
