Reeta wakes up from a coma, handcuffed to a hospital bed. She doesn’t know how she got there; she doesn’t know her last name; she doesn’t remember anything about where she came from. And she definitely doesn’t remember committing the horrific crimes for which she is accused.

Inside she felt hollow. No personality lingered, no feeling of happiness or stress or calm or anger filled the void. She felt only weakness. She tried to access the feeling of hate or fury that would surely drive someone to do these things, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t find a malevolent fascination with the macabre, or a perverted desire for blood and gore. She rooted deep into her absent character and could come up with nothing but empty space.

Reeta is accused of murdering two young women who look like her and there are two more missing girls. The FBI know for a fact that it’s her, even though these days the evidence against her might be considered circumstantial at best. But it’s 1966, not 2026. Desperate to figure out who she is, Reeta reaches out to Washington Post reporter Carol Joyce hoping the reporter will help. All Reeta has to go on is the photograph Agent Willow gave to her. Reeta knows the man in the photo is her father.

Carol knows the man in the photo is connected to Pine Ranch, a plantation house turn religious homestead aka cult, led by the charismatic Jeb. But information about Jeb and the cult is meted out at a snail’s pace (and too bad because that was the most interesting part of this story).

I was hoping After Everything You Did was going to be a quick page turner, but it wasn’t. No quick internet searches available to speed things along, sadly. No forensics to clear up any lingering confusion. At 350 pages, it just took a dog’s age to get anywhere and when the twist finally came (and judging from the reaction on Goodreads, it was a shocker to lots of readers), I found myself just sort of weary from all the times characters swallowed thickly.

Just okay for me.