In Hatchet Girls, by Diana Rodriguez Wallach, teenager Mariella Morse's parents are found brutally murdered, Borden-style, in modern-day Fall River just a few blocks away from where the famous forty-whacks double murder happened. Her boyfriend Vik Gomez is in the room, covered in blood and holding an axe, but he swears he has no memory what happened or even how he got there. This sets up a YA thriller with intriguing ties to old murder legends and to modern criminal justice.
I really enjoyed the feel of this one, I mean, why should southern gothics get all the dark family history and creepy swamps? So I loved the Yankee version here. In Hatchet Girls, the Morse family is one of the old Fall River families (real), who own a lot of the old mills (real) and turn them into stylish lofts and upscale retail (artistic license). They're well-connected, wealthy and powerful, even if Mariella's father is abusive at home. This is a strong contrast to Vik and the rest of Gomez family, who just moved from Philly, and live in a walk-up apartment. Vik is arrested and held without bail, and it's pretty clear that as a brown kid and a newcomer, he'll be found guilty even if some of the blood splatter patterns don't quite match Mariella's account.
Hatchet Girls was a special read for me, because it was set in Fall River, where I live now, and the book references many of the local murders, from King Phillip's War in the 1670s, to the satanic cult murders in the 1970s. I'm still discovering these myself, so I enjoyed Tessa, Vik's sister, discovering and investigating the strange stories of Fall River.
I really enjoyed the setting of the Freetown-Fall River State Forest for a supernatural mystery. This is my new favorite hiking and mushroom-ing spot since our move, and it has about 10,000 scary and unsolved stories. Hatchet Girls captures the blend of a beautiful spot with dark vibes well.
So overall, I liked this one a lot. I enjoyed the suspense from Vik’s accusation and arrest and I enjoyed the local supernatural elements, but towards the end, I sort of felt like the narrative had backed itself into a corner. Once we have multiple dead bodies, a suspect in custody, and then clear evidence of dark supernatural forces, how can all that resolve and go back to our everyday Fall River? It's a tall order to tie it all together and resolve the supernatural elements in the mundane world, and so towards the end, the way Vik's arrest resolved felt a bit anti-climatic, after a very suspenseful YA thriller.