Parents Weekend

by Jeff Ayers

Santa Clara University hosts an annual Parents Weekend for students’ families. In Finlay’s latest thriller, he showcases five families with baggage, from students hiding secrets to their parents with facades created to ignore reality. This generational mess creates a drama school larger than anything New York or Los Angeles universities have ever seen, with dysfunction ruling the day. The parents and youngsters are supposed to attend a dinner event together, but only the adults show up. Numerous calls and texts to the kids go unanswered, and the worries grow. An accidental drowning of a student a couple of days earlier may hold the key. FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller arrives to find answers. Keller was seen in Finlay’s earlier novels Every Last Fear and The Night Shift, and fans will be thrilled to see her again, while newcomers will fall in love with her. As Keller talks to the parents of the missing students, she begins to uncover the truth of what each family wants to avoid. Finlay tells the story from the parents’ perspective, occasionally peering into the five missing students’ lives without revealing too much. He crafts a genuine page-turner with a cast of flawed and realistic human characters. Plan a weekend to devour this terrific thriller.

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