Blackwood Bay, a quaint village in the northern part of England, was originally famous for the smuggling that occurred along its coastline centuries ago. But when two local girls disappear, the town has a new notoriety, one that's dark and brooding.
After her sophomore film is declared a flop, Alexandra Young's film making career is in jeopardy. She is convinced to make her next documentary in Blackwater Bay, with its residents telling their own stories. Alex also has ties to the village having spent her troubled childhood there. Instead of a picturesque setting, she finds instead a village that is afflicted with tragedy.
Alex gets more than she bargained for when her work unearths secrets both old and new. It appears that the suicide of 15-year-old Daisy Willis, who plunged to her death from a cliff a decade ago, may be connected to Zoe Pearson, another teen who went missing seven years earlier. Or at least that's what some of residents think. When another girl goes missing, the town wants answers and everyone is a suspect.
In Final Cut, Watson explores themes of memory and identity through the lens of a documentary. In Alexandra Young, we have a narrator with secrets of her own who goes from being an observer behind the camera to part of the story.
There is no question that S. J. Watson is a fantastic writer. The plot is perfectly paced and executed, the setting atmospheric, and the characters are well developed. The difference between three and four stars is because the storyline started to go in circles versus linear—I'm not sure if this was a strategy to build suspense, but it detracted from the overall enjoyment of the story.
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S. J. WATSON is the award-winning author of Before I Go to Sleep, which has sold more than four million copies in over forty languages, followed by the critically acclaimed novel Second Life.
Watson lives in London.
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