November 6, 2023
Brody’s sure-footed debut paints a harrowing portrait of a life derailed by internet conspiracy theories. Teddy Angstrom is a 26-year-old English teacher at a prestigious prep school in coastal Maine. When Teddy was 16, her 18-year-old sister, Angie, disappeared. Now, on the 10th anniversary of that event, Teddy’s father, Mark, has driven off a bridge to his death. Sifting through her father’s belongings, Teddy discovers he’d grown obsessed with Reddit true crime communities dedicated to Angie’s unsolved disappearance, many of which have developed far-flung conspiracy theories (including one that Mark killed Angie) to explain it. Equal parts horrified and fascinated by the discovery, Teddy starts to poke around the communities herself, quickly becoming addicted to the puzzles they present and neglecting her personal and professional responsibilities in the process. As she burrows ever deeper, her grasp on reality slips, and she begins confusing actual memories of her sister with some of the conspiracy theories. Did she really know Angie? Or her father? Narrating from Teddy’s point of view, Brody explores in elegant prose potent themes both contemporary (internet addiction) and evergreen (grief), though she winds up delivering more of a twisted character study than a bona fide mystery. For genre fans who don’t mind loose ends, this is worth the plunge.