Living with a Jar of Secrets... ("What I'm Reading Wednesday" review)

I can’t really say that I’ve done many (any?) bad—like, seriously bad—things. Most of us probably can’t, if we’re honest. Plenty of stuff we’re not too proud of, sure. Things we’d take back, not do, or do differently, you bet. But really, truly, awful bad? 

But… what if you had—or, since I don’t know everyone out there who’ll stumble across this, what if you’re the rare beast who has—done something undeniably horrible, that’s been buried deep for however long? What would your life be like, every day, knowing that… whatever… was there, had happened?

It’s a scary thought, and a far-scarier reality, in Jennifer Hillier’s brilliant Jar of Hearts.

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Teenagers are notoriously stupid… in the sense that they process things differently, often act (or act out) very impulsively, and make some incredibly-poor decisions (of the sort that down the road, as adults, they’d never, ever make).

Fourteen years ago—under the combined (bad) influences of too much booze on an empty stomach and her older, controlling boyfriend—sixteen-year-old Georgina (“Geo”) Shaw helped cover up the murder of one of her best friends in the entire world, the beautiful and popular Angela Wong… and has kept that particular secret buried, literally and figuratively, ever since.

It would still be a secret, in fact, if the third part of the long-ago, high school BFF-trio—Kaiser Brody, all grown up and now a detective with the Seattle PD—hadn’t managed to catch an elusive serial killer, dubbed the “Sweetbay Strangler”, who led him all the way back to Geo (now a high-flying young exec at a big pharma company). 

How? Why? Because the psychopath who committed at least three other murders is none other than Calvin James… Geo’s one-time high school boyfriend, who killed, hacked up, and buried poor Angela one fateful night, after a party.

Finally, the truth has all come out, and both Calvin and Geo are sent to prison (him, for life, and her, for a five-year sentence). Justice is served as well as it can be… or so it seems to the community, who are shocked, horrified, and infuriated at the knowledge of what Geo did (and then lied about) half-a-lifetime ago.

But prison, it turns out, is only another part of Geo’s continuing punishment, because the secrets she held for so many years are still not fully-exposed… and someone is determined that the very last bit of the actual truth of that awful night comes out… even if it means more people have to die in the process.

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With Jar of Hearts, Hillier creates what is perhaps the best picture of what prison must be like (for a non-hardened, non-career criminal female), that I’ve ever read. (It’s not all awful. You learn the ropes; you get used to it. Eventually, the routine becomes your new “normal”. And, when you get out, actual normal life is strange.) 

She also creates a main character (Geo) who—certainly on the surface—seems hard to love or identify with; a sixteen-year-old who was complicit in the murder, burial, and cover-up of same, of her best friend? How can such a person be someone to root for?? And yet… she is, the more we find out (slowly, slowly) about not only that night, but everything that led up to it, and that followed.

Jar of Hearts is a roller coaster ride of not only thrills, but also feelings. I didn’t see this one coming… but am so glad that it did.

~GlamKitty

[Note: Trigger warning needed, here, for those sensitive to mentions of rape. If that’s something you don’t want to or can’t read about, please think twice before picking this book up.]