I Let You Go

After reading Let Me Lie by former police officer Clare Mackintosh, I was ready to try one of her earlier books and this is her first (also a "Crime Novel of the Year" winner in England). It begins with an innocent-seeming domestic activity: a mom picks her 5-year-old son up from school and is walking home with him to prepare dinner. But as she drops his hand to fish out keys from her purse, he dashes into the street and is fatally struck by a speeding car. As she cradles his body, she sees the driver back up and drive off.
We now follow the story of the police investigation and, separately, that of Jenna Gray, a woman who has lost everything and flees her life to disappear into a small village on the coast of Wales where no one knows her. She rents a run-down cottage, has no phone, talks to no one. And she is debilitated by terrifying nightmares. We know she was a sculptor who has suffered injury to her hands. We know she was involved in the accident. But her identity is not what we are initially led to believe.
Jenna gradually begins to rebuild her life, staying anonymous, taking up photography as an outlet for her artistic nature. The local shop keeper at a near-by summer caravan park becomes a friend and offers to sell cards with Jenna's photographs on them in her shop that. Jenna rescues and then adopts a dog, beginning a tentative relationship with the local veterinarian as a result.

But her past begins to catch up with her and eventually she is arrested for the hit-and-run death of the boy, once again destroying the life she has built. We are misdirected from the very beginning. The plot is cleverly twisty, the settings very atmospheric. I will no doubt pick up her other novel, I See You. Laudatory reviews from The New York Times and Kirkus.