Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call that Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers.

It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.

But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.

This book contains scenes that depict sexual assault.

Small-town mysteries have been having a moment recently, and I’ve read a lot of them. I know the standard plot beat by beat: the familiar local characters—at turns charming and untrustworthy, of course—and the dark underbelly overtaking this otherwise quaint location. But The Return of Ellie Black upended all my preconceived notions with a story that is as morally complex as it is entertaining.

Two years after disappearing without a trace, a young woman named Ellie Black miraculously reappears, seemingly unscathed. But she won’t talk about where she’s been. Detective Chelsey Calhoun is working the case and immediately notices a connection between Ellie’s circumstances and her sister’s, who disappeared decades before after a heart-wrenching accident that left the whole town stunned. The more she digs into these similarities, the more Chelsey finds herself getting lost in her own grief, and the more she fears for the lives of the women around her.

The Return of Ellie Black is incredibly atmospheric, fully entrenched in the dark woods of Washington state and the somber outlook of a town struck by tragedy. Chelsey is one of my favorite characters in recent memory, a wholly unique narrator—an outsider in a homogenous small town who can see with clarity what others can’t. This mystery novel asks big questions about who holds power, and what they’re willing to do to maintain it, layered over a heart-pounding narrative that kept me turning the pages. It’s everything you could ask for: spooky, thoughtful, and unforgettable.