My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.71 with 265 ratings (as of 9/8/2020)

When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn’t there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful, and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?

And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . in a place where Clemmie wasn’t supposed to be, and where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly, the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present. …Synopsis from Goodreads

200 Word Review

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review. The opinions are entirely my own, and any quotes are taken from the ARC and may be different in the final published copy.

Having read Caroline B. Cooney’s Janie Johnson series, which many people call The Face on the Milk Carton series, I was thrilled to read her latest novel, Before She Was Helen.

While Cooney is well-known for her YA novels, Before She Was Helen, is not categorized as young adult, but as adult fiction. Her main character is Clemmie, a still-working but living in a retirement community teacher, who intentionally built a bland and quiet life for herself. Everything changes when she does a wellness check on her next-door neighbor. She photographs a stunning and beautiful object. Thinking her family would enjoy it, she shares the photo with them. The picture quickly makes its rounds on the internet, and Clemmie’s life changes in a blink, and all her carefully kept secrets are threatened.

For anyone who has read Cooney, you can identify her writing style. Her words word flow in an easy and distinct manner. It is as if she writes how she talks and does not change her vernacular or style. Reading Before She Was Helen was like reading a familiar book that I never read before.

Goodreads does not list any other books set for publication as of yet.

This review was published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble on 9/8/20. When available, the review will be published on Scribd.com and, using Overdrive, will be rated in 9 libraries.

Genre: Mystery, Fiction
Print Length: 336 pages
ISBN: 9781728205120
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: September 8, 2020

Purchase at Amazon *** Barnes and Noble