Starred review from August 1, 2023
Gagnon's second thriller, after All Dressed Up (2022), follows four friends who reunite at a remote winery 15 years after their mutual friend Vanessa disappeared there just before their college graduation. The narrator, television writer Emily, is at a coffee shop struggling through a script for the network sitcom that's brought her financial stability if not creative fulfillment when she catches sight of a woman who looks just like Vanessa. Emily contacts her college friends: Vanessa's spoiled cousin Brittany, who just inherited the winery from her grandparents; athletic people-pleaser Paige; and loner Lydia. Once at the winery, Emily purports that she finally wants to get to the bottom of what happened to Vanessa: did she really die the night she disappeared? And if so, whom among the group might have had a hand in her death? Told from Emily's point of view and through snippets of the dramatic, heightened screenplay she's writing about the group's plight, Gagnon's slow burn takes plenty of twists and turns as it becomes clear that each of the friends has something to hide.
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October 16, 2023
Gagnon (All Dressed Up) sets this predictable thriller at a remote winery on the Oregon coast. Fifteen years earlier, five college friends threw a party on the winery’s grounds. After plenty of booze-fueled revelry and argument, one of them—the vibrant Vanessa—went missing and was presumed dead. Now, Emily Fischer, the last person to see Vanessa alive, is a disgruntled writer on a middling sitcom who sees selling a screenplay as her only hope of rising out of mediocrity. When Emily spots Vanessa (or possibly her doppelgänger) at an L.A. coffee shop, she’s inspired to build her film around the mystery of Vanessa’s disappearance. With surprisingly little resistance, Emily convinces Vanessa’s cousin Brittany, plus old friends Lydia and Paige, to return to the now-shuttered winery for a reunion, with the ulterior motives of researching her screenplay and determining whether her coffee shop encounter is worth investigating further. After the women arrive, violence ensues. Gagnon dawdles on the way to a fairly obvious conclusion, with scenes from Emily’s script alternating with her narration of current events. The characters’ motivations are flimsy enough to flutter in the breeze. Little here is memorable. Agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary.