Bodie Kane is a film professor and podcaster who goes back to the boarding school where she attended high school to teach a couple of two-week long mini courses. Being on campus pulls her 25 years back into the past: she had roomed one semester with Thalia Keith, who was murdered during their senior year. Omar, a Black coach who ran the athletic programs had been found guilty of the murder and had been in prison for a couple of decades now. Bodie is now re-hashing her time at high school, including many instances of sexual harassment by male students towards female students, and of possible grooming of Thalia, by one teacher in particular, and she now thinks Omar is innocent.
She gives her podcasting class an assignment to investigate and report on a number of possible topics, including the murder of Thalia, and two students are looking into it. Most adults on campus, in addition to Bodie's former classmates, are displeased when word gets outs that Bodie is encouraging the re-examination of the murder.
Numerous instances where women have been killed by their partners are interspersed throughout, which help inform Bodie's reconsideration of Thalia's murder. The modern MeToo movement and racism both loom large. Bodie is obsessed and goes through her own list of suspects one by one, trying to look for reasons and opportunity for each person to have murdered Thalia. In a sleep-deprived moment, she even adds herself to the list.
Bodie's character, and the other characters she describes in the course of the story, seem so well fleshed out in this riveting novel.
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