When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland #bookreview #thriller

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Title: When Cicadas Cry

Author:  Caroline Cleveland

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Publication Date: May 7, 2024

Page Count:  327

My rating: 4 stars

About the book:

In this stunning debut by a South Carolina attorney, Zach Stander, a lawyer with a past, and Addie Stone, his indomitable detective and lover, find themselves entangled in secrets, lies, and murder in a small Southern town.

A high-profile murder case—A white woman has been bludgeoned to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro, South Carolina. Sam Jenkins, a Black man, is found covered in blood, kneeling over the body. In a state already roiling with racial tension, this is not only a murder case, but a powder keg.

A haunting cold case—Two young women are murdered on quiet Edisto Beach, an hour southeast of Walterboro, and the killer disappears without a trace. Thirty-four years later the mystery remains unsolved. Could there be a connection to Stander’s case?

A killer who’s watching—Stander takes on Jenkins’s defense, but he’s up against a formidable solicitor with powerful allies. Worse, his client is hiding a bombshell secret. When Addie Stone reopens the cold case, she discovers more long-buried secrets in this small town. Would someone kill again to keep them?

Ideal for fans of mystery, suspense, and thrillers in the vein of Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls and Stacy Willingham’s A Flicker in the Dark, as well as for readers who followed the high-profile Murdaugh murder trial, held in the same small town as in When Cicadas Cry.

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is a legal thriller at the forefront of the story but also infuses in a decades old mystery. The story in When Cicadas Cry is one that is told by changing the point of view between the characters.

Zach Stander is a down on his luck attorney looking to make a name for himself when he gets a call from a grandfather of a young black man just arrested for murder. Sam Jenkins was found covered in the blood of his co-worker claiming that he just found her there in a remote church and tried to help.

Addie Stone is Zach’s investigator and girlfriend who encourages Zach at every step in the murder case. However, without much work of her own in the small town of Walterboro, South Carolina while Zach is busy Addie offers up her services to look into some of the town’s cold cases. The case that catches Addie’s attention is one where two young women had been murdered over three decades ago but Addie is determined to look at it with fresh eyes.

Legal thrillers often feel like a guilty pleasure when I pick them up since I don’t come across many to read so I was excited to jump into When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland. This was a debut novel and you could tell the author is very familiar with the legal system and also from the south where the racial tension swirls all around which all made the book very intriguing. I personally guessed one aspect of this story which seemed a little obvious but maybe it was only because I read a lot but with other twists to come the pages did just fly right one by leaving this at four stars.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online:

Goodreads  /  Amazon

About the author:

Caroline Cleveland is the founding partner of the law firm, Cleveland & Conley, LLC, where she represents private and public employers, including law enforcement. A native South Carolinian, she inevitably writes from a Southern perspective. She gravitates — both as a writer and a reader — toward mystery and suspense, and she cannot resist a character with a dark secret.

Caroline lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband, David.