The Anniversary, Alex Finlay, author, Ari Fliakos, Brittany Pressley, narrators
This is a novel largely about two main characters. Jules Delaney, a six-foot beauty, and Quinn Riley, a handsome high school classmate. Although they notice each other when they are 17 years old, the timing isn’t right. She has a boyfriend, and a terrible secret that will change the arc of her life. He is preoccupied with helping to care for his non-verbal, developmentally disabled brother. His father died young, in an accident. His uncle Pat has stepped in to help his mom raise him and his brother. It takes another decade before Jules and Quinn both realize that they were meant for each other, and that some of the people they trusted had betrayed them. The world is pre-occupied with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the May Day Murderer. Young women are being attacked. Some disappear and are never found.
From the get-go, these two teens’ lives take very divergent paths. On May first, they both suffer from the fickle hand of fate. On that day, Jules is attacked by the man known as the May Day serial killer, when she leaves a concert alone because she is angry at her boyfriend and her best friend. For some unknown reason, he lets her live but warns her that he knows where she lives. If she tells anyone, he will return. For years, she sees suspects everywhere, but she never saw his actual face, so all she does remember is his distinctive voice and laugh. She never reveals what happened to her that night, until she understands that she should have, possibly, to prevent an attack on someone else. On that very same night, May first, it is Quinn’s seventeenth birthday. After the concert, Quinn sees a classmate, Brad, who happens to be Jules’ boyfriend, being threatened. He wants to do the right thing, but when he intervenes to help, the bully raises the stakes, and Quinn punches him. The bully is severely injured when his head hits the ground. Quinn’s dreams of college are dashed. He spends the next year, until he turns eighteen, in Juvenile detention.
Years pass, and both go on in different ways than they had anticipated. Quinn joins the military and then becomes a private detective. She becomes a successful model and then opens up a non-profit to help rescue abused women and to try and shine a light on their plight. She works with women who like her were attacked, but did not speak of it. The victims were often shunned and even blamed. Both Jules and Quinn are actually trying to settle the score for the events that upended their lives. Several times, in the next few years, their paths do cross unexpectedly. They were both surprised but happy to see each other.
During this same time period, Jules’ sister disappears, possibly also attacked by the May Day Murderer, and Quinn’s mother is murdered, with no known suspects. Quinn is still incarcerated when it happens, but the warden lets him briefly attend the funeral. Both crimes were unsolved, leading both Jules and Quinn to wind up in careers searching for the culprits responsible for their difficult lives and the tragedies they had faced.
Although, at times, the thriller seems like chick lit, it is a page turner with so many possible suspects, it is really hard to solve the crime until the very end. It is a good read.