I am certain we’ve all heard the saying: You only have one chance to make a good first impression. And it’s the absolute truth. You can change your impression, but the second impression or third or fourth…it’s never going to be the same.

My entire life (with the exception of the first four months), I have lived in the Chicagoland area. The furthest I ever lived from Chicago was northwest Indiana, but I commuted into the city every day for work. I don’t remember the first time I saw Lake Michigan or the view from the John Hancock Center or the Sears Tower. (No, I do not mean Willis Tower. I said what I said.) I do remember the first time I saw The Bean. (Cloud Gate? What’s Cloud Gate?) But that was unveiled in 2004, well into my adulthood.

When you spend your whole life in a place, it’s easy to take for granted the sights that others want to see when they visit. My late husband Dennis grew up in the Caribbean, swimming in the ocean, lazing around at the beach. The first time we went to a beach in Chicago, he looked at the lake, turned back and looked at me, turned back to the lake and said, “That’s fresh water?” And when he waded into the water, he said it felt weird. He only ever swam in salt water.

My sister-in-law Stephanie and her husband Jorman moved to the United States about a year and a half ago. They regularly venture into the city to see the sights, visit new places, and experience new things. Jorman asked Stephanie one day why I don’t go into the city more often. (I work from home, so I’m almost never there.) The city isn’t new for me. It’s beautiful, and I think we have one of the most iconic skylines, and I still love to see Buckingham Fountain in the summer. But I don’t go sightseeing, and it would take a pretty hefty bribe to get me to attend Taste of Chicago.

I go to Navy Pier when we have out-of-town visitors. I buy tickets for special exhibits at the Museum of Science and Industry because Corinne enjoys it. We go to the theater and eat at Ed Debevic’s because it’s so much fun. But these are all things I’ve done before. I still love them, and I love living literally a few miles from such an amazing city. But sometimes, when I accompany someone somewhere for the first time, I wish I could see it through their eyes…for the first time all over again.

Movies, TV series, and books fall into a similar category. Once you’ve watched it or read it, you will never respond the same way again. You can’t. You know the ending.

When I introduced Corinne to the series Friends, her friend Aly was binge watching it at the same time. Aly started before we did, but we caught up quickly. When Aly got to the last season, I asked her to wait to watch the last episode until we could all watch it together. She didn’t want to. I begged her because I wanted to see both of their reactions to the last episode. Once it was over, they agreed that they were glad they watched it together. (If you know, you know.)

The first time I saw The Sixth Sense, I didn’t figure out the surprising ending that the creators were convinced they gave away. And when it was over, I wanted so desperately to watch it again immediately, to catch all of the clues I missed the first time I saw it. But I knew the ending. I could sit there and think, “Of course!”…but it wasn’t the same. I would never be able to un-know what I knew. When Corinne was old enough to watch it, I enjoyed watching her reaction to it, just not quite as much as I enjoyed watching it the first time. (If you know, you know.)

Alex Finlay, a new author to me, has a brand new release next week. I wish I could read it again not knowing what I already know. I loved it, and I hope you will too.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for What Have We Done by Alex Finlay

368 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: March 7, 2023
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher’s Description

A stay-at-home mom with a past.
A has-been rock star with a habit.
A reality TV producer with a debt.
Three disparate lives.
One deadly secret.

Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, and Nico were the best of friends, having forged a bond through the abuse and neglect they endured as residents of Savior House, a group home for parentless teens. When the home was shut down―after the disappearance of several kids―the three were split up.

Though the trauma of their childhood has never left them, each went on to live accomplished―if troubled―lives. They haven’t seen one another since they were teens but now are reunited for a single haunting reason: someone is trying to kill them.

To survive, the group will have to revisit the nightmares of their childhoods and confront their shared past―a past that holds the secret to why someone wants them dead.

It’s a reunion none of them asked for…or wanted. But it may be the only way to save all their lives.

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Main Characters:

• Jenna – married to Simon (a tax lawyer), stepmom to five-year-old Lulu and 17-year-old Willow, stay-at-home mom who used to work as an assassin for The Corporation
• Donnie – has-been rock star in a band called Tracer’s Bullet, has been an alcoholic and a drug addict since he was a teenager
• Nico – executive producer of a reality TV show, has a gambling problem
• Artemis – pioneer in social media technology, currently focused on everything from next-generation artificial intelligence to e-commerce, number three on Forbes’s list of the richest tech titans
• Ben – a federal judge, recently murdered

What Have We Done is Alex Finlay’s third novel, and I will definitely be buying and reading his first two. This phenomenal thriller grabs the reader in the Prologue, continually tightens its grip, and doesn’t let go until the very satisfying end. It took me about four days to read, and I regretted starting it on a weekday because…well…work kept me from finishing. Had I started it on a weekend, I don’t think I could have stopped. I spent several days extremely tired because I just didn’t want to stop reading, and I sacrificed sleep in the process.

Jenna, Donnie, Nico, Artemis, and Ben share a past at Savior House group home 25 years before the main story takes place. “At the top of a knoll through a break in the trees, five teenagers stand at the edge of a shallow grave.” With that first sentence, we know immediately that three of those teenagers are Jenna, Donnie, and Nico since the chapters cycle through their points of view. We figure out pretty quickly that Artemis and Ben make up the other two since Ben has been murdered and someone keeps trying to kill the other four.

Abused, neglected, bullied, the teenagers did something horrible. We know that. And we assume that the threats to their lives now result directly from whatever they did when they were teenagers. We know that, but they don’t know that. As they try to put the pieces together, they all end up back in Chestertown, PA, where their lives were dramatically changed by Savior House.

Jenna is the strongest character in the bunch, but they all have connections that help them try to figure out who’s after them. It’s not until they come together, however, that we as readers start to understand what’s happening and who is behind the attempted hits. But don’t be fooled. Things are not as they seem, and that’s one of the things that makes this so exciting.

I could not finish this book fast enough because I was so caught up in who was behind everything. But this is one of those novels that you wish you could read again for the first time. I guess I’ll just have to read more novels by Finlay because…whew…this one was quite a rush.

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