Review: You Will Pay by Lisa Jackson

You Will Pay by Lisa Jackson

Published May 30, 2017

Kensington

 

 

3.5 Stars

Over the years I’ve read few of Lisa Jackson’s books and have really enjoyed them. YOU WILL PAY is a stand-alone novel that revolves around a religious summer camp and a fateful summer where four people went missing. Twenty years later after new evidence is found, the case is re-opened.

Twenty years ago Camp Horseshoe closed after two of the teenage camps counselors went missing. At the same time a worker from the Camp also disappeared. There was also an escaped convict who hasn’t been seen since. At the time this all happened, Camp Horseshoe was run by a preacher named Jeremiah Dalton and his wife Naomi. Jeremiah’s son from his previous marriage, Lucas Dalton also worked at the camp.

Now twenty years later, Lucas Dalton, a detective with the local sheriff’s department, is heading out to his father’s ill-fated religious camp. A local man has found what he thinks are human remains so Lucas needs to check it out. Back at the abandoned Camp, Lucas looks at the welcome sign and is transported back to that summer. He thinks about his father, Jeremiah Bernard Dalton, who portrayed himself as a dedicated man of God, and everyone believed him. Well everyone, except for Lucas.

“Jeremiah Dalton sermonized about the Good Lord as if he truly believed, yet lied with the silver tongue of a snake oil salesman”

Now that human remains have been found, the case is re-opened. But because Lucas was part of the original investigation, it’s a conflict of interest and so he is taken off the case. Now everyone is asking questions. Including a reporter that was a young camper that same summer. She thinks this could be the story that makes her career.

Jo-Beth Chancellor has been one big ball of stress since finding out about the remains found at the camp. Jo-Beth was one of the counselors that summer. She’s worried one of the “basket case” women are going to blow things for her. She’s not going to let something that happened twenty years ago change ruin her life. Just like back then, Jo-Beth knows everyone’s secrets and she’ll use those secrets to keep people in line. She contacts the other former counselors and tells them they need to meet up to make sure they have their stories straight for when the police start asking questions.

Then she gets a call, and the voice she hears almost stops her heart.

All of the women are very uncomfortable being back. They wonder why they let Jo-Beth call the shots. Many of them want to just tell the truth. But do any of them even know the truth anymore? So many lies have been told.

What really happened all those years ago?

Someone knows the truth about the things that happened that summer and they will do whatever they have to do to keep anyone from finding out.

But someone else wants what happened that summer to come out…..and they also want revenge.

“If You Don’t Tell You Will Pay”

There are a lot of characters to keep up with in this novel. There is quite a bit written about each of them, their lives then and now. Thankfully the chapters are labelled with characters names and whether it is “Now” or “Then” which helped me keep track, most of the time. As the story goes back and forth between then and now we start to get a picture of what may have happened. However, not everything is as it seems.

I think with the amount of characters, the time spent developing their stories, made the rest of the novel feel a bit rushed. And while most was revealed, there were also a few issues left unresolved.

Although I had a few issues with this novel, I still enjoyed it and for the most part was satisfied with how it all turned out. It was an entertaining, suspenseful read with a lot of twists and turns.

Thank you, Kensington Books for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

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