Editorial Content for Forget Me Not

Stacy Willingham, the bestselling author of A FLICKER IN THE DARK and ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY, is back with FORGET ME NOT, a blistering psychological thriller set on a coastal vineyard in South Carolina.

Claire Campbell is down on her luck. Recently passed over for a much-deserved promotion at her job at the New York Journal, and having quit as a result, Claire is anxiously watching her bank account dwindle to single digits, and she has no prospects on the horizon. Worse, her lack of a job or any hobbies has meant a resurgence of the vicious nightmares that have plagued her since her older sister’s disappearance 22 years ago.

Despite Natalie’s supposed killer --- an older boyfriend with a criminal record --- being arrested, closure has never been attainable for the Campbell family, in part because they have never been given a body to bury. Claire has barely spoken to her parents in 15 years. But when she learns that her mother has suffered a fall and needs help, she figures she has nothing to lose and makes the trek from New York City to Claxton, South Carolina.

"Deeply immersive and atmospheric, FORGET ME NOT possesses all of Stacy Willingham’s trademark talents: emotionally resonant plotlines, evocative settings, and ripped-from-the-headlines mysteries. But she also has penned her most immersive novel yet..."

Things at home are no better than they once were. Claire’s mother is still finding comfort in the bottom of a bottle, and memories of her sister are everywhere. So when she is reminded of Natalie’s former summer job at Galloway Farm, a vineyard just off the coast, she decides to take a trip down memory lane. It’s clear that her mother doesn’t want her help, so when she learns that Galloway is in need of a picker for the summer --- a job that offers not just room and board but $2,000 she desperately needs --- it seems as good a reason as any to stay.

In the beauty and breadth of Galloway, Claire feels close to the sister she wants to remember, not the one plastered across newspapers, the missing girl whose romance with a much older boy caused her supposed death. Galloway was, after all, the last place Natalie spent a happy summer before she started to change, becoming angry and anxious and staying out all hours of the night.

At first glance, Galloway is idyllic, a utopia. The work of picking grapes is a catharsis --- the farm owner, Mitchell, and his farmhand, Liam, tell her --- and her own private cabin will allow her the space to process and determine her next steps. A quick wipe-down of the grimy interior reveals a hidden diary, penned by none other than Mitchell’s quiet, sickly wife, Marcia. But rather than detailing the ins and outs of farm life and marriage, Marcia’s diary, written when she was only 18, tells a different story --- of a sheltered young girl who fell in love with a dazzling boy a bit older than her. Job or no job, Claire is a journalist at heart, so while she starts to learn the ropes of the vineyard, she spends her nights diving into Marcia’s tales of young adulthood and young love.

The charming Mitchell whom Claire meets on the pages of Marcia’s diary bears little resemblance to the watchful, controlling man running Galloway, and the near-silent Marcia certainly doesn’t seem like the lovelorn girl who dreamed of college and opportunity. As she reads on, she learns that Mitchell was sort of a drifter, a young man who made vague allusions to having “studied people” at Berkley, but who seemed to have no money, job or other prospects. And then Marcia begins to write about the “others”: the young women living in a rundown farmhouse deep in the weeds, each of whom were “found” by Mitchell and renamed by him.

In the daylight hours, Claire starts to slowly and carefully explore Galloway, fending off venomous snakes and mysterious tea drinks prepared by Mitchell, all the while feeling a creeping, smothering air of something surrounding Galloway. The more she reads about Marcia’s teenage love affair with Mitchell, the more the similarities start to pile up between Marcia’s leaving her family and the way that Natalie left one night, never to return again. But stories of missing girls and evil men are far too common in the world, especially in Claire’s previous line of work. Isolated and cracking under the strain of unemployment and grief, even Claire must wonder if the parallels she’s seeing between Marcia’s life and Natalie’s are all in her head.

But then why do both women’s stories end at Galloway, and why does Claire keep uncovering connections to her own past with every revelation? Far from being a place to forget her sister and find closure, Galloway is turning into more of a second chance: an opportunity to make things right for Marcia, even if she can never do the same for Natalie.

Deeply immersive and atmospheric, FORGET ME NOT possesses all of Stacy Willingham’s trademark talents: emotionally resonant plotlines, evocative settings, and ripped-from-the-headlines mysteries. But she also has penned her most immersive novel yet, with a setting so real you can feel the sun on your back, hear the snakes slithering through the grass, and taste the bold, ripe sweetness of the grapes Claire harvests. More than that, though, this is a seriously eerie, chilling thriller, with Claire’s debilitating status as an unemployed, estranged, grieving daughter adding a surprising layer of unease to this already creepy mystery.

Willingham manages her dual plotlines seamlessly, breezing between Claire’s days on the farm and Marcia’s diary. However, even though her control seems effortless, she still manages to preserve a wickedly delicious tension, never quite stating (or worse, overstating!) the connections between Claire’s past and present, but leaving just enough up for interpretation that even the most seasoned psychological thriller fan will be left guessing at some of the major twists. I particularly enjoyed the novel’s epistolary format, with Marcia’s diary entries easing up the pace just enough that Claire’s waking hours --- so full of the activity of farm life and investigation --- feel even more fast-paced and edgy.

Add to all of this Willingham’s generous, tender exploration of grief, guilt and the insidious nature of secrets, and you have the makings of yet another standout thriller from an author who never disappoints.