Ten years ago, Theodora 'Teddy' Angstrom's older sister Angie disappeared. Her case remains unsolved. Now, on the anniversary of Angie's disappearance, Teddy's father Mark has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark's family, he had been actively investigating conspiracy theories sourced from a Reddit community of true crime fans fixated on Angie, and Teddy soon finds herself falling down that same rabbit hole. After all, if hope dies last, Angie could still be alive. Teddy's burgeoning investigation quickly gets her in hot water with everyone from her frustrated colleagues at the pretentious high school where she teaches English, to her middle-aged gun nut boyfriend and her long-lost half-brother.
eddy is a complicated heroine whose ill-advised decisions and self-destructive tendencies make her less than sympathetic, though also impossible to ignore. Her descent is swift and systematic, leading to sensationalist developments and voyeuristic turns. No one and nothing, she learns, should be trusted—including her own tangled memories. The dark corners of the internet feed a teacher’s investigation into her sister’s probable murder in the contemporary thriller Rabbit Hole.
Brody’s debut is visceral and at times gut-wrenching, exploring the ways grief and a need for answers can be exacerbated and exploited by a culture obsessed with true-crime stories. Powerful and unforgettable.
Escalating series of bad decisions seem almost inevitable, but there’s a clear logic to how Teddy reaches them, even if, by light of day, it seems fuzzy. Despite a few ham-fisted metaphors and egregiously unbelievable moments, the dizzying pace mixed with introspective passages (not to mention very short chapters) keep readers turning pages so the book flies by. A timely rumination on true crime, internet obsession, and paranoia.
