Excellent Debut. This is one of those books I randomly picked up as an Amazon First Read… and then only read it over a year after its initial publication when I was getting ready to read its sequel as an Advance Review Copy.
Y’all… I missed out. This book is truly quite excellent, with a solid plot revolving around a broken woman from a small town having to go back to said town to hide from new problems… and ultimately have a reckoning with past ones too.
As someone from a “small” (yet thriving and growing) Southern town who has indeed seen many more rural towns actively dying off largely similarly to how the town in this book is portrayed, this absolutely strikes as a fictional book that is uncomfortably all too real.
The mysteries of both the past and the present work remarkably well as our lead character tries to reconcile her memories with what she actually sees in front of her today, and along the way we get some very dusty rooms in more ways than one.
Oh, and the murders themselves? I’ve seen more chilling in books… but this is certainly one I’d never seen used in any other book, and is pretty damn chilling itself.
Very much recommended.
This review of Broken Bayou by Jennifer Moorhead was originally written on September 30, 2025.