Book Review – Black-Eyed Susans

by Julia Heaberlin (Penguin/Michael Joseph) ISBN 9781405921282

16-year-old Tessa Cartwright is one of the four ‘Black-Eyed Susans’ – the victims of a serial killer. She is the ‘lucky’ one, the one who miraculously survived, with almost no memory of what happened to her, after being buried with the other girls.

Almost two decades later, Tessa, an artist and single mother, wonders if her testimony helped condemn the wrong man to die. She has to tell somebody else about the flowers, the Black-Eyed Susans that are planted over the years on her birthday no matter where she has lived.

Tension mounts as the execution date of the supposed killer approaches. Will Tessa remember what really happened? Narrated between the past and the present, Heaberlin has written an intricately plotted, nail-biting novel.

I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Amanda Patterson
4/5

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