That Night
We meet Toni Murphy just as she’s about to be paroled from a Canadian penitentiary. When she was 18, she and her boyfriend, Ryan, were convicted of killing Toni’s younger sister. Flashbacks to the months before her sister was killed and the years she spent in prison help the reader understand the woman Toni is today and why she is torn between clearing her name and keeping her head down and avoiding a parole violation. Moving back to her hometown, Toni knows that the truth behind her sister’s murder is just out of reach. She’s certain, though, that it’s not a coincidence that her sister died shortly after befriending Shauna, a prototypical mean girl who made a hobby out of harassing Toni all through high school. Stevens does an excellent job conveying Toni’s near-constant state of unease—as a victim of teenage bullying, a prison inmate protesting her innocence, a parolee who’s prohibited from coming in contact with the people who could clear her name. And she supplies a corker of an ending. Fans of Alex Marwood’s The Wicked Girls (2013) will enjoy this suspenseful tale. --Karen Keefe