Someone to Blame by C. S. Lakin, a Mysterious Review.

Review: C. S. Lakin's tense thriller, Someone to Blame, follows the lives of a family as they try to recover from the tragedy of losing their two teenaged sons, one killed in an accident, the other by suicide.

Daniel Moore was driving the car he and his brother Jesse were in when it crashed into concrete abutment one night. Jesse was killed instantly. Torn with grief, Daniel kills himself on the day of his high school graduation. Believing that the only way to start anew, the boys' parents, Matt and Irene together with their sister Casey, move upstate to the coastal community of Breakers. But it doesn't seem to help. Matt and Irene start to blame themselves: for not following through on Daniel's diagnosis as a child with ADD, that medication and treatment might have helped him develop into a more responsible person; for the perception they favored Jesse over Daniel as they were growing up; and myriad other reasons. Then a stranger enters their lives, a young man named Billy Thurber. Quiet and sullen, his appearance in Breakers coincides with a series of crimes, crimes the residents are quick to blame on him. And just as Matt and Irene begin to think that Daniel may have been a victim — not of any crime, but of parental decisions that affected his life — so too they think Billy Thurber may be as well.

Someone to Blame is a moving, albeit sometimes depressing story. The characters are realistically drawn and the foundation of the plot — that it's always easy to blame someone or something for life's misfortunes — is well told. In the end, difficult though it may be, healing only begins when one takes a hard look inward.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Someone to Blame.

Acknowledgment: C. S. Lakin provided a copy of Someone to Blame for this review.