Close Your Eyes

Amanda Eyre Ward's newest novel, Close Your Eyes, appealed to me as soon as I read that it was based on a real event. Ward grew up in New York, and it was during her teenage years that an unsolved murder took place in a nice, safe suburb. Ward remembers what she was doing the night of the crime, and continued to check up on this mystery for a while. She was stunned when the case was eventually solved- and the killer was a teenage boy who was drunk and happened to enter his former childhood home, killing its residents. I read all of this on Ward's website, and was instantly intrigued.

Close Your Eyes is fiction, although at times I felt as though Lauren, the narrator, was very real. Lauren and her brother, Alex, are asleep in their treehouse on the night their mother was murdered in their home. Their father is eventually convicted of the crime he vehemently denies. Now, years have passed. Lauren has no relationship with her imprisoned father, while Alex believes in his innocence. Lauren has no intention of confronting her past, but then her brother leaves to work in Iraq through Doctors Without Borders, and her panic attacks cause her to seek counseling.

While part of this story is Lauren's, Sylvia and Victoria also have a voice in this book. I loved Lauren's narration, and was at first unsure of how Sylvia and Victoria fit into this story. Yet, their role in Lauren's life changes her forever.

Ward's story is a bit suspenseful, a bit of women's fiction, and impossible to put down. I began reading just yesterday and finished it off last night before bed. Luckily I have another of Ward's books, How To Be Lost, awaiting me on my TBR pile.