Wakarusa, Indiana is a small town full of people who love to gossip and judge all the other townsfolk. Her father Billy came home in a rage late one night after finding out from his longtime friend, Dave (the high school nickname of Margot’s Uncle Luke), that Dave/Luke was actually the father of the twins. the small indiana town is a great setting, the people in its community are pretty interesting characters, and the combination of both create an engaging atmosphere. Thanks to Kat (in comments) for pointing out another possible True Crime inspiration: April Tinsley. This was a solid whodunnit thriller about the murder of a little girl named January, with clear inspiration drawn from the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Flowers perfectly captures small town USA - the social pressure to do the right thing, the in-line thinking.I randomly picked the audiobook since it was available on Libby and the summary sounded interesting.

Margo comes back to her hometown to find out what happen to January after another girl goes missing. I didn't expect much from the queen of true crime plagiarism, but I somehow thought the story would at least seem incentive. This spring, some media outlets raised the possibility of doing enhanced DNA testing in the hopes of finally solving the case, but I haven’t seen any results of that or know if it ever happened. Although it IS NOT written in a podcast format, it unfortunately still mostly READS like one-with the exception of the sub-plot with Margot’s Uncle.

There is someone in town who doesn’t want her there and is desperate to scare her off, can Margot find out the truth before her nightmares come true.

But Margot has problems - she’s losing everything, including her uncle with early dementia and she keeps seeing a strange red-haired woman everywhere, all while Margot is side-eyeing everyone she knows from this small town, including those closest to her. The story requires the reader to put away his/her common sense on multiple occasions which becomes harder with each eye rolling moment. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. There was a box for January, but strangely, it only had a few of her dance recital programs, and no personal items.I have a lot of respect for the author’s accomplishments and success, and it gives me no pleasure to hand out a 2-star review. After discovering the evidence in Elliott Wallace’s storage unit, Margot goes to tell Billy that she’s solved January’s case. The author did capture the small town atmosphere, but the mystery itself was a replay of the Jon Benet Ramsey case. It did have the makings of a story that brought to mind the case of Jon Benet Ramsey and the author seemed to mimic the family of that child where each member was suspect. As Margot digs deeper, she begins to suspect that there is something truly sinister lurking in the small community: a secret that endangers the lives of everyone involved.