Twenty Seven Minutes by Ashley Tate
Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead.
For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?
Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.
With Phoebe’s memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.
Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Celeste Ng, Tate’s literary suspense Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping debut about what happens when grief becomes unbearable and dark secrets are unearthed in a hometown that is all too giddy to eat it up.
My Review
If you asked me when this was set I’d say the 1980s, but they have mobile phones. They don’t even seem to use DNA. It’s set in a small town in America and I often struggled with the setting. I think it’s because I have no experience of such a claustrophobic place. The characters are all vile. I’m sorry, but they are. They all lie to each other all the time.
The premise of the book is a car accident in which popular teenager Phoebe Dean died. Her brother Grant was driving – was he drunk? – and we also discover that ‘Crazy Becca’ was in the car with them. Grant and Becca were both badly injured. Becca doesn’t remember any of it, which appears to be a good thing as far as Grant is concerned. They hit a deer in the pouring rain, end of. Ten years on and Becca only seems to have one emotion – jealousy and the endless ‘what about me, look how I suffered.’ I know you did, but Phoebe died. Maybe, from time to time. be thankful that you survived. And stop obsessing about Grant, because he doesn’t care about you, except where it impacts him.
Grant was a promising football star, hoping for a college scholarship, but his injuries stopped that from happening. He’s been left behind in the backend town of West Wilmer. Phoebe was forever nagging him to do better at school, but her attitude to his girlfriends (and there were plenty) was all a bit Flowers in the Attic for me. They were supposed to be running away together, but Becca believes that it was her and Grant, not Phoebe.
I didn’t like the way that, even though the book is set in two timelines – now and ten years ago – we flip into the past in the middle of the ‘now’ chapters (in italics), which I found very irritating.
June is a throwback to the 1950s, including her name, which initially made me think she was much older. No-one in the UK is called June unless they are at least 60. Her older brother Wyatt disappeared on the night of the accident and has never been seen or heard from again. Their father left and June is alone with her mother, who dies at the very beginning of the book.
I felt sorry for June, who just wants the truth. Grant is a horrible human being and Becca is deluded. So I did care what happened? It was so drawn out that if I hadn’t been reading with my book club I think I’d have just jumped to the end or given up. Sorry, because it’s so well written, but it’s just too overlong for me.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Ashley Tate is a Canadian author. Twenty Seven Minutes is her first novel.
