... powerful ... reads with the clarity and promise of a quality true crime podcast — and I mean that as the highest of praise ... Schultz brings both sensibilities — the literary and the thriller — to Little Threats ... While it is a masterful slow-boil, with a palpable sense of menace suffusing nearly every scene, it is also a stark and realistic depiction of the traumatic legacy of violent crime and tragedy. Running throughout is a breathtaking evocation of the early 1990s and a powerful, conflicting female coming-of-age story ... Key to the book’s success, at every level, is Schultz’ skill with characterization. Her use of multiple narrative perspectives allows keen insight not only into Kennedy, Carter and their father, but of more peripheral characters. Each is powerfully drawn, complicated and conflicted, each harbouring the sort of secrets that might have claimed a young girl’s life, secrets that may claim yet more victims fifteen years later.
... both a taut whodunit and a haunting snapshot of the effects of a violent crime ... features a delicately handled supernatural element ... That the repercussions of violence overshadow all the joy of Haley’s life is only one of the tragedies of this thoughtful novel that examines not only that particular milieu of the ’90s but also the aftermath, 15 years on, of a single night of violence ... Ms. Schultz brings her level gaze and compassionate prose to all these fallible people as they finally unravel the truth, evoking the eras she writes of with intimate knowledge and a cultural depth that will resound with anyone else who lived through them too.
Fans of Tara French, Kimberly Belle, and Orange is the New Black will fall under this book’s spell ... Terse and tense, Little Threats investigates righteous anger, teenage angst, and the enormity of setting the record straight.
As multiple characters search for the truth, the most compelling point of view is Kennedy’s retrospective account from prison. Kennedy’s voice comes across as detached, the omniscient perspective of someone who’s had a lot of time to think over the details. In order to understand what led to Haley’s death, Kennedy considers all the little threats that lived under the surface of her family's and friends’ daily lives that could have grown into something more sinister. This detached voice bleeds into the rest of the narrative, making the slow build toward truth feel impersonal. Haley’s memory haunts those who miss her most, but this metaphor takes on a more literal, paranormal form toward the end. The most effective revelation is more subtle—that everyone is more than who they are on the surface, and nothing is ever exactly as it seems ... Read this not for the whodunit but for a gripping character study of an accused girl making sense of her reality.
... taut ... The resolution, though satisfying, relies a bit much on dysfunctional family tropes, but the emotional energy of the story carries the book through. Schultz knows how to keep the reader engrossed.
