Book Review: That Weekend by Kara Thomas

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Thriller
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: June 19th, 2021
Pages: 336, hardcover
Source: Library

Three best friends, a lake house, a secret trip – what could go wrong?

It was supposed to be the perfect prom weekend getaway. But it’s clear something terrible happened when Claire wakes up alone and bloodied on a hiking trail with no memory of the past forty-eight hours.

Three went up the mountain, but only one came back.

Now everyone wants answers – most of all, Claire. She remembers Friday night, but after that… nothing. And now Kat and Jesse – her best friends – are missing.

That weekend changes everything.

What happened on the mountain? And where are Kat and Jesse? Claire knows the answers are buried somewhere in her memory, but as she’s learning, everyone has secrets – even her best friends. And she’s pretty sure she’s not going to like what she remembers.

This was fully engaging up until the point where Claire goes to college. After that, it seems to lose itself a bit, especially as her going away to college takes her out of the main setting where the action is happening. It never really regained its footing after that and it lost the urgency. 

I do understand that this happens in real life, too, where investigations can go for months and people have to live their lives, so perhaps Thomas was trying for realism here. The problem is that we lose a lot of what happens to Claire during this time, which as we’re told by Claire is quite a lot. 

The other issue was the ending, where Thomas evidently wasn’t content to just have the expected twists; she includes another huge twist that, frankly, was unnecessary and added nothing to the story overall, especially as it’s revealed in one of the last chapters and so the story can’t explore the impact it has on the characters it involves. It felt a bit cheap, to be honest, and didn’t give that sort of thing the severity it deserves. 

So, it’s not my favorite of Thomas’, but it hardly ruins my enjoyment of her works overall.