I love it when an author can transport you to a specific place and time. That's exactly what Caitlin Mullen accomplished with her debut novel, Please See Us. Set in a struggling Atlantic City, the book captured a seaside town filled with the faded promise of glamour and reinvention, making it the backdrop for a dark, slow-burning suspense story that completely pulled me in. By the time I finished, I was left with that rare post-book euphoria that only comes from discovering an author whose voice resonates with you. Naturally, I was eager to see what Mullen would do next.
That opportunity has finally arrived with Heather, her sophomore novel. This time, she trades the neon glow and crumbling casinos of Atlantic City for the dense wilderness of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The setting may be different, but Mullen's gift for atmosphere remains intact. From the very first pages, she creates a sense of place so vivid that it feels as though you're wandering through the story yourself, and she wraps that atmosphere around another suspenseful tale that hooked me from the start.
It’s 1994, and sixteen-year-old Annabelle has just discovered that her twin sister, Sabrina, is having an affair with an older man. At first, she’s stunned. The sisters have always been inseparable, sharing secrets and navigating adolescence side by side. How could Sabrina keep something this significant from her?
But shock soon gives way to curiosity. Who is this mysterious man? What does he want with Sabrina? And why has her sister become so secretive? As Annabelle begins searching for answers, the unthinkable happens. Both girls disappear.
Years later, in the same New Jersey town, newly appointed police chief Callie Hauser is determined to prove herself. She’s spent her entire career trying to step out from under the shadow of her family’s reputation—particularly her mother's—and is eager to lead the department into a new era. But when an arrest unexpectedly reopens questions surrounding the decades-old disappearance of the twins, Callie finds herself pulled into a mystery many people would rather leave buried. The deeper she digs, the more unsettling the answers become. Long-held assumptions begin to crumble, loyalties are tested, and Callie is forced to confront uncomfortable questions about the town she serves and the people she trusts.
Caitlin Mullen's gift for pairing atmospheric settings with multigenerational mystery is on full display in Heather. She transports readers to this isolated corner of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where the dense woods become a character in their own right. Hidden among the trees are secrets that span generations, connecting women whose lives are separated by decades yet bound together in unexpected ways.
Mullen alternates between past and present timelines, carefully peeling back layers of the mystery and revealing the truth piece by piece. The novel reminded me a bit of Liz Moore's The God of the Woods. Like that book, Heather is dark, meticulously plotted, and interested in much more than simply solving a crime. It explores family, womanhood, inherited trauma, and the ways in which the past continues to shape the present long after we think we've left it behind. While I ultimately connected a bit more with Mullen's debut, Heather is nevertheless a compelling and richly written mystery. It's the kind of novel that slowly tightens its grip until you're fully immersed in its world, eager to uncover each secret hidden among the trees.
For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2026, 46)
