Book ~ "Everything She Feared" (2023) Rick Mofina

From Goodreads ~ When a teen falls off a cliff while taking a selfie, the last thing she sees before plummeting to her death is Katie Harmon, the nine-year-old girl she was babysitting, looking down at her. 

Investigators gather at the scene, and Katie’s mother, Sara, rushes to comfort her daughter, yet there’s a small, secret ping of alarm in Sara’s heart that she cannot share - though rookie detective Kim Pierce senses it. 

For years, others have tried to unravel this secret, from true-crime podcasters to a haunted journalist searching for a killer who vanished after being released from prison. And now, with detectives tightening the focus of their investigation, Sara is consumed by her darkest fear - that the babysitter’s death was not accidental.

Katie is nine years old and on a day trip with a bunch of other children and their counsellors. Katie and Anna, who is a counsellor and also babysits Katie, are the last to get off the bus. Stopping near a cliff to take a selfie, Anna falls off the cliff but manages to grab a branch and hangs on. Katie runs for help but by the time she gets back, Anna is dead at the bottom of the cliff. The police are called in and investigate ... was it an accident ... or suicide ... or was Anna pushed and if so, by whom?

In the meantime, Ryan's sister, along with others, were murdered by a serial killing couple back in the 1990s. The husband committed suicide in prison and the wife served her time and was released seven years ago. Ryan has been trying to track the wife because the whereabouts of the bodies is unknown and Ryan wants to know where his sister's body is so he can give her a proper burial and have peace at last. One of the trails he is following takes him to Seattle where Anna had died.

I've read a few books by this author and thought this one was okay.  It is written in third person perspective with the focus on wherever the action is. The first part of the book is intentionally vague, alluding to things that Sara knows about her past and is ashamed of ... it eventually all comes out but as it was easy enough to figure out what was going to be revealed, the book could have been edited down a bit. The ending came together quickly and was a bit convoluted.