Broken Bayou

When her two great aunts died, Dr. Willa Watters, a renowned children's psychologist with a popular podcast, traveled from Fort Worth, Texas, to Broken Bayou, Louisiana to retrieve personal belongings left behind for years in the aunts' attic. Author Jennifer Moorhead dropped hints that Willa was desperate to find articles that would bring shame and possible criminal charges to Willa and her mother.

It was because of her own dysfunctional upbringing that Willa became a child psychologist. As the older of two girls, Willa was protective of her younger sister, who suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Being raised by an alcoholic with mental health problems subjected both girls to very unstable and unpredictable lives, marked by a series of sudden changes based on their mother's chaotic choices. In the current action, Willa's mother was living in a nursing home, suffering from COPD and was still not taking her meds to control her moods. She pleaded with Willa to get the abandoned boxes at any cost.

Willa's hope for a quick, incognito trip was not to be. Immediately before her return to the Bayou (where she spent happy childhood summers with her aunts) Willa had an inexplicably disturbing flashback triggered by a caller to a radio talk show. A video clip of her subsequent meltdown went viral, threatening her career. The publicity also guaranteed she would have no anonymity when arriving in the aunts' hometown, despite the passage of years.

Two mysteries dominated the novel. The first was the nature of the items that Willa was so anxious to reclaim and what terrible secrets they held. The second mystery developed when a severe drought lowered the water level in the Bayou, revealing sunken barrels and cars containing human remains. I guessed wrong regarding both mysteries. Willa got closure from an examination of the items that she and her mother left behind, but not without heartache. I was truly stunned by the identity of the serial killer. Moorhead skillfully led me astray by sprinkling the very short, but final memories of the murder victims throughout the book. I couldn't pick out the guilty party among the citizens of Broken Bayou, but that is what makes reading a mystery fun.

This is a terrific debut! I enjoyed Broken Bayou a lot. Willa was a great main character. She was strong and smart, but also flawed and damaged. It was nice to see her actually go to the police and tell them the truth rather than lie like you see in so many other books. I loved that it was under 300 pages, which allowed for a nice quick pace with lots of action. There are multiple twists and turns, and I didn't see any of them coming. Some scenes near the end had my heart racing! I highly recommend this book and I'm looking forward to seeing what Jennifer Moorhead comes up with next!

I don’t want to risk spoiling anything, so I’m not going to say anything other than . . . KEEP READING. The book moves along quickly, and just when you think it’s going in one direction, it takes off in another. It was refreshing to read a thriller where the narrator is reliable. She’s also flawed and working through a lot of trauma of her own. The book’s pacing is on point, conversations and behavior ring true, and the twists and turns kept me guessing. 5 stars.

Broken Bayou is set in Louisiana where the heroine, Dr. Willa Watters, once spent her childhood summers at the home of her maiden aunts, Pearl & Petunia. Willa is now a child psychologist who specializes in autism because her sister, Maybry was autistic. One day, after a disastrous live TV interview, Willa receives a call from The Historical Society of Louisiana informing her that the twins died earlier this year and left their antique home to the Society but with instructions to let Willa have anything she wanted from the home's attic.

Willa, in a state of near panic, races to Louisiana because the attic not only holds treasures from her childhood, it holds a secret, one that could destroy her family. Distracted by her worries Willa doesn't realize there's a bigger story playing out in Broken Bayou than her humiliation on TV. There's a serious drought happening in the South and the town hasn't seen any rain in months. The drought has caused the water in the bayou to evaporate and what it reveals is much worse than anyone could have imagined.

Five metal barrels with human remains have shown in the ever-shrinking water along with the car her bipolar mom was driving that last summer they ever spent here. Is this why her mom never brought them back? Is this part of whatever is on that VHS tape Willa stole that night?

Willa finally watches that security tape, the one she'd taken the night her mom and Mabry returned to the aunt's house. Her mom with bruises on her face, and Mabry only muttering their agreed-upon safeword. What she sees on the tape leaves her shaken but determined to figure out the answers to the mysteries behind who's killed the women in the barrels, the only person she trusts is her childhood sweetheart, Travis, now a cop with the local police department. She races an ambitious newswoman for the answers and every day brings them both closer to the truth, the truth, and danger.

This mystery had my fingers on high-speed flipping through the pages! My Kindle app should have been sending out smoke tendrils, I swear. 😁 The mystery isn't only about the gruesome murders in Broken Bayou's river, but the secrets that toxic families keep. The kind of families in which both she and Travis grew up. Broken Bayou explores how abuse can affect children, even those in the same family, differently from one child to the next.

The pace in BB is quick, but it doesn't leave you with too pat of an end, which I appreciated. With some novels of this length, you might get an author who'll rush the end but not here. It goes to show how much talent this writer has, IMO, as she wraps up one twist after another, and manages to keep me riveted to the pages. So, Jennifer, you're getting not only 5 well-deserved stars but an A++, too!