What Happened That Night

by Deanna Cameron

Overview

Sometimes the lies we’re told are nowhere near as deadly as the lies we tell ourselves . . .


Four months after the murder of golden-boy Griffin Tomlin, the entire town of Shiloh is still in shock. For Clara Porterfield, the world has crumbled into a million chaotic pieces.

At home, her sister awaits trial for Griffin’s murder, her mother obsessively digs in a dead garden, and her father lives in perpetual denial.

At school, Clara is haunted by her classmates’ morbid stares and the unspoken questions they are too afraid to ask.

And deep inside, Clara holds a truth she isn’t ready to face—and it could explain what really happened the night of Griffin’s murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781989365205
Publisher:	Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	375,788
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Deanna Cameron began posting her stories on Wattpad under the pseudonym, LyssFrom1996, when she was just sixteen years old. Since then her debut novel, What Happened That Night, has been published in North America and France, after gaining over a million reads on Wattpad. Originally born in Canada, Deanna now attends university in Western New York and writes in the early hours of the morning.

Editorial Reviews

2019-07-24
Murder, sexual torture, and other dark crimes among teens.

Clara Porterfield's childhood crush, Griffin Tomlin, is dead. He was struck in the head with a rock before falling into a pool and drowning. Now her sister, Emily, is in jail awaiting trial for the murder. The town is shocked by the crime since Emily had been a well-liked cheerleader, seemingly normal and responsible. But Clara is keeping an awful secret—that she was viciously raped and assaulted by Griffin on the night of a Super Bowl party. Clara's struggle to cope with her emotional and physical injuries are further complicated by a developing romance with Griffin's grieving best friend and her friendship with Aniston, a writer for her school newspaper who's asking too many questions. The author's note acknowledges that the book can be triggering and suggests that it is, in part, about topics "as real as young adults struggling with the aftermath of their sexual assaults." The elements to do with the trauma of surviving a brutal rape are handled well, and readers will ache for Clara. However, as a thriller, the writing is perfunctory, and the melodramatically unrealistic plot twists that include explicit, mature content involving mutilation of animal and human corpses, sodomy with a beer bottle, and more undermine the efforts toward authentic victim exploration and instead devolve into violently pulpy fiction. Most characters are assumed white; Aniston is Mexican American.

Graphic and disturbing elements are ultimately unredeemed. (author's note) (Thriller. 17-adult)

Kirkus Reviews