10/09/2026
This month, library assistant Shauna suggests Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier. Barb Bonifacio grew up in the town of Seaside, which had always relied on tourism to get by, so when one too many young women dies near Wonderland, the local theme park, so too does the town's tourism industry. Twenty-five years ago, a charming drifter named Sam met three girls at Wonderland, and then one of the girls went missing, her body surfacing days later in a nearby cranberry bog. Barb and Nicolette were shocked to learn that the man they met at Wonderland was the Carnival Killer, arrested for the murders of five young women, including their friend Lorelei. In the aftermath, Nicolette moved away to the city to pursue her dreams of acting and becoming famous, while Barb stayed behind in Seaside, eventually becoming a reporter at the local paper. Now a true crime show has picked up the Carnival Killer's story for its latest season, and Sam has recanted his confession to Lorelei's murder. Readers quickly learn that Barb and Nicolette have secrets that they've been keeping about that night, and they knew all along that Sam didn't kill Lorelei. Then a new body washes ashore just before the reopening of Wonderland amusement park, making it clear that someone is looking to continue the Carnival Killer's work, and Barb decides to investigate, only to discover that this is not the only young woman to go missing in the area. At times, I found Barb to be a somewhat unlikeable main character, although she did improve over the course of the story as she investigated the current and past disappearances and dealt with her own issues in the course of her investigation. The story is full of twists and turns, taking the reader back and forth between past and present day, to the point that I missed that a couple of key points were actually taking place at an earlier point in time. There were definitely a couple of final twists that I didn't see coming at the end of the story. Heart of Glass is available at Cuba Library in hardcover.
