Let’s just start with two indisputable facts:
I love Stacy Willingham.
I love Stacy Willingham’s books.
So when I say Forget Me Not is another stunner, I mean it with my whole heart.
Twenty-two years ago, Natalie Campbell vanished just after her 18th birthday. A bloody shirt, a car, an arrest—case closed. Done and dusted. Or... not quite.
Now we meet Claire Campbell, Natalie’s younger sister, who has spent the last two decades building a life that keeps her grief neatly shelved—until it doesn’t. She’s just quit her job as an investigative journalist (promotion snub = righteous rage) when her dad calls: her mom’s been injured, and it’s time to come home.
So Claire heads back to South Carolina, where she’s promptly dismissed by her ever-prickly mother. (Love that for her.) With a long summer ahead, she ends up at Galloway Farm, the last place Natalie loved, a dreamy vineyard along the coast that still hums with her sister’s memory. And, because this is a Stacy Willingham novel, you know that’s where things start to get creepy.
Claire moves into the guesthouse, stumbles on an old journal, and is pulled into the mystery of a man and his strange, insular family. There’s a commune/cult/Manson-like thing. There’s a diary. There’s a trail of secrets. Honestly, this book is like it was written for me.
What Willingham does so well—and always delivers—is creating women who feel you already know them. Claire is smart, driven, emotionally messy (in the best way), and deeply haunted. She misses her sister with a ferocity that aches off the page. And as she digs deeper into Natalie’s last days, everyone becomes a little too suspicious. Mitchell? Creepy. Liam? Suspiciously charming. Claire’s mom? Cold enough to store leftovers.
The vibe is immaculate. The sticky Southern heat, the post-storm air, the humidity that settles in your bones—it’s all alive on the page. And the pacing? Willingham is breadcrumbing us like Hansel & Gretel, leading us into the woods one gasp at a time, until the final truth blooms—just like the forget-me-nots in the forest.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy, and especially to Stacy Willingham for once again writing a book that feels like it crawled out of my brain and into my hands. You’re my forever pretend best friend. Please never stop.