book review what never happened

Book Review: What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall

by Ava Fearn | Jun 3, 2023 | Black Authors , Black Literature , Book Reviews , Sistah Girl Book Reviews , Sistah Girls Book Club , Thriller | 0 comments

What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall

“Colette Sienna Weber of Los Angeles, California, is no more. She left this world on Sunday, March 22, 2020.

The woman didn’t heed any of our previous warnings. That is why Colette was taken to the highest point on Santa Catalina and shot in her fingers, toes, and then knees, living agonizingly long enough to suffer until one final bullet between the eyes ended her for good.

We warned you, Colette. You fucked around- and you found out.”

That, Sistah Girls is the eerie, but captivating start to acclaimed thriller author Rachel Howzell Hall’s new novel What Never Happened .

NetGalley and Thomas and Mercer Publishers were gracious enough to provide me with an advanced reader’s copy and I’m here to spill all the tea!

The novel follows obituary writer Colette Weber, who returns to the picturesque Santa Catalina Island after the tragic, unsolved murder of her family almost twenty years ago.

Tensions are high for Colette–her toxic husband Micah is divorcing her, there are whisperings of a global pandemic, and she is returning to the island where her family was brutally murdered.

However, things only worsen as she learns an unusual amount of elderly folks are turning up dead.

When Colette receives her own obituary in the mail, she realizes that these are not just coincidences–instead something deeply sinister is going on in paradise, and it is up to her to uncover the truth.

Overall, I enjoyed the book!

It was so unlike any thriller I have read in the past and I believe that’s due to the unique plot and characters that Howzell Hall has crafted.

How many novels have you read that involve a grief-ridden obituary writer, trapped on an island, during the chaos that was March 2020? Exactly!

Usually, I’m weary at the mention of anything having to do with the pandemic in novels or on the screen (I need escapism), however, the pandemic was a great vehicle for suspense throughout the book.

I could feel Colette’s claustrophobia and fear of being trapped on a sinister island because of lockdowns.

Another aspect of the novel that really worked for me was the big reveal/plot twist at the end.

Any great thriller has readers on the edge of their seats, eager for the mystery to be solved—and Sistah Girls this novel was no exception.

Because this is a #spoilerfreereview I won’t get into it, but I will say that the ending was wild and answers all your burning questions!

One thing that I will caution readers about, is the number of events and quirky characters to keep track of throughout the novel. It became somewhat confusing, however because of the unique and ambitious nature of the story Hall is telling, I believe it is worth navigating through it.

The end does a nice job of wrapping everything up nicely with no loose ends.

Final Thoughts

Overall Sistah Girls, What Never Happened is a thriller worth checking out! Full of family drama, murder, and even some romance, it has a little something for everybody.

Be sure to grab a copy when it hits shelves on August 1st!

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WHAT NEVER HAPPENED by Rachel Howzell Hall – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The nitty-gritty: With colorful characters and an intriguing setting, What Never Happened is a fun mystery with some great twists.

Rachel Howzell Hall is a new author for me, and I’m so glad I had the chance to read her latest book. This was a fun, boisterous, guilty pleasure of a story. It’s not perfect, and I can’t say I liked all the characters. But as far as entertainment value goes, the mystery kept me guessing, the setting was new and interesting, and I had a lot of sympathy for the main character Coco, who is just trying to figure out her life.

Colette “Coco” Weber is returning to Catalina Island after living in Los Angeles for the past twenty years, and she’s not happy about it. Twenty years ago, when she was sixteen, her mother, father and brother were murdered during a home invasion, and Coco only survived because she snuck out to be with her friends that night. At the time, her Aunt Gwen agreed to take care of her until she came of age. Now Gwen lives alone in the house Coco inherited from her parents, and due to memory problems, she needs a caretaker. Coco agrees to temporarily move in with Gwen and keep an eye on her, with the intention of wrapping up some loose ends, selling the house, and taking Gwen back to L.A. with her. After all, there are no happy memories for Coco on the island, and she’s still dealing with PTSD from the trauma of that terrible night.

Once she settles into the creaky old house, the past comes flooding back. Gwen clearly doesn’t want her there, and even her college friend Maddy, who runs the local newspaper and has offered Coco a job writing obituaries, seems to be hiding something. And when widows around town begin dying under mysterious circumstances, Coco decides to investigate. Someone is sending her threatening notes and wants her to leave, but Coco is determined to stay and bring justice to the dead women, even if no one believes her.

So there is a lot going on in What Never Happened , maybe too much, which makes the plot a bit chaotic at times. You have the dying widows, a mystery that Coco is determine to solve. The man who was convicted of killing her family—wrongfully, it turns out—has just been released from prison, and now Coco has to face the fact that the murderer might still be out there. There’s a side romance with a man named Noah who also works for the paper. Coco is also trying to fix up the house and get it ready to sell, no easy task, it turns out, on a small island cut off from the mainland. And she’s in the middle of a divorce as well. Her soon-to-be-ex husband Micah thinks she’s stolen a valuable ring from him and is sending her threatening messages. And to top it all off, Hall sets her story in the weeks leading up to the Covid-19 lockdowns. Whew! That’s a lot to cram into one book, although the author does a pretty good job of keeping all her plates in the air.

However, the things I loved about this book make up for it’s shortcomings. Let’s start with Coco. I absolutely loved her voice. She’s feisty, excitable and very much down to earth. She’s had to cope with a lot, I mean just imagine if you had lost your family in one fell swoop like she did? Her aunt Gwen is terrible to her and is trying to get her to leave, but Coco cares for her anyway. As one of the only Black people on the island, she deals with racism on a daily basis (even her “boyfriend” Noah makes some racist comments). Coco majored in journalism at UCLA and now writes obituaries for a living, which I thought was pretty cool. We get examples of these scattered throughout the book, and they were highly entertaining. The story is told from Coco’s first person POV, so her quirky style is front and center.

The setting of Catalina Island is almost a character itself. The story takes place in Avalon, the main city on the island, and the author paints a vivid picture of a place only accessible by ferry (or helicopter), an insular place where the locals all know one another and outsiders are treated as such. I loved the combination of beauty and danger. The island is full of indigenous poisonous plants, unpredictable weather, and of course, hundreds of dangerous, free roaming buffalo. Because of the size of the island, only a certain number of cars are allowed, so most people drive golf carts instead. And in this story, there is at least one killer on the loose, which adds to the excitement. With real estate prices through the roof, a housing shortage, and a lack of resources, I can firmly state that I would never want to live there!

At first I was worried about the Covid element. Like many other readers, I’m sort of over stories that take place during the pandemic, but luckily Hall puts a different spin on hers by setting it during the very early days, when no one knew anything about the virus and everything was speculation. This added to the growing sense of dread, especially when lockdowns were put in place and Coco finds herself literally stuck on the island with a killer.

There are two main mysteries going on. First, there’s the mystery of the local women who are mysteriously dying, although at first Coco is the only one who notices something fishy is going on. Hall inserts chapters from the murdered women’s point of view as they are dying, which was very creepy and effective. There’s also the mystery of who is harassing Coco and sending her death threats. I thought the author did a great job of interweaving these two mysteries and keeping the reader guessing. I loved that the harasser writes fake obituaries to Coco to try to scare her, they were creepy and a bit shocking!

The ending was over-the-top, but still a lot of fun. The author even throws in a feel-good epilogue that made me shed a tear or two. I’m very glad I took a chance on Rachel Howzell Hall, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting her next book.

Big thanks to the publisher and Sparkpoint Studio for the review copy.

14 responses to “ WHAT NEVER HAPPENED by Rachel Howzell Hall – Review ”

So it’s flawed but very entertaining? I am adding it to my TBR!

I hope you get the chance to read it:-)

Ok you sold me on this one. Sounds like a chaotic mess that I want to witness – just not live myself. So glad I grabbed this as a Prime Reads choice!

Very chaotic but in a good way:-) I hope you enjoy it!

Wow, this one sounds very good. Thanks for sharing Tammy

I’m glad I got to check out a new author:-)

It was! But it kept me turning the pages:-)

A 4 star review makes me think I should try and fit this one in quite soon. Glad you enjoyed it 😀

It was a lot of fun:-)

Okay, so maybe not perfect but you’ve sold it to me – great review. Lynn 😀

It was fun, I’m glad I tried a new author.

Wow! This really sounds like a lot! But now I’m really curious so I need to give it a try!!! Thanks for sharing!

Rachel Howzell Hall And What Never Happened

Buckle up because New York Times best-selling author Rachel Howzell Hall is going to take you for a wild ride with her latest thriller, What Never Happened . The story revolves around Colette “Coco” Weber, who was busy getting into trouble while her family was being murdered. Perpetually guilt-ridden, she returns to the scene of the crime twenty years later and soon begins to suspect there’s still a lot to discover about the deadly attack on her family.

Amy Wilhelm: How does Colette’s survivor’s guilt affect her current life and relationships?

Rachel Howzell Hall: She can’t forgive herself for going out with people who didn’t ultimately matter on the night of that home invasion. Lonely, she latched onto a marriage with the wrong person–but it had promised stability. She doesn’t have many close friends because she can’t trust people, nor does she want to become close to someone who may be taken away from her. She’s in pain. But this pain and guilt pushed her to become a gifted obituary writer committed to writing meaningful stories about the dead.

AW: Even under better circumstances, returning to one’s childhood home can be emotional. Why does Coco put herself in this challenging position?

AW: Coco isn’t always sure she can trust her memory or perspective on the tragic event that changed her life forever. How does this uncertainty play out?

RHH: Because of this mistrust and perspective, Coco is rarely confident that her decisions and reactions are grounded in truth. Her interactions with her aunt tend to be strained–she doesn’t want to sound harsh to Aunt Gwen, who took care of her after the home invasion. Fear, gratefulness and guilt have kept Coco from being firm. She doesn’t fully trust her heart–her relationship with Micah is strained because deep down in her heart, she doesn’t love him but has a fear of being left alone again. While on the island, she knows that she’s an outsider, so naturally, she doesn’t know life here. Sands shift all around her, so she can’t trust that her footing is as sure as it should be. She can never relax because there’s really been no closure for her after that home invasion–she thought she was safe back then, too, and that turned out to not be true.

AW: The wrong person was convicted of murdering Coco’s family. What emotional effect does this have on her, and how does it impact how she goes forward?

RHH: It’s that inability to trust herself and her perspective. If she (and the legal system) can be wrong about this , what else could she be wrong about? Maybe she’s made too many mistakes on motives and bad guys–the wrongful conviction has proven that. And since the real killer is still out there, she can’t breathe, fearing that she’s become a target once again. Catalina Island is already so different than Los Angeles, but now it’s possibly hosting the real murderer. This means Coco is constantly looking over her shoulder, constantly wondering if the monster is someone close to her.

AW: It seems like the only one Coco can trust to take the current slew of deaths on Catalina Island seriously is herself. Unfortunately, it’s remarkably easy to believe that authorities might be willing to overlook the unusual circumstances just to keep from stirring things up in an unpopular way. What inspired this aspect of your story?

RHH: I wanted to tell another locked-room story but on an island that’s very close to Los Angeles, but in many ways, worlds away. And since we were all going through COVID, I wanted even more isolation. Bad things were happening to people during this time–and not just getting sick themselves. Villains were using the cloak of isolation to hurt people. Villains were using the pandemic as a cover-up for murder. So combine all of that, and voila! What Never Happened !

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, what never happened.

Life on Santa Catalina Island seems to be idyllic and carefree, but in WHAT NEVER HAPPENED, Rachel Howzell Hall imagines the dark side of the serene, secluded and supposedly safe vacation spot. Colette Weber, also known as Coco, is back after a failed marriage that almost led to a breakdown. Her aging aunt, who lives on the island, needs help. While they've never been close, Gwen did help raise Coco, so she feels she must be there for her now.

At the start of the novel, we wonder if Coco is going to be a reliable narrator. She doesn't seem to be mentally stable and is very open about her mental lapses. Her marriage (such as it was) ended up being a nightmare, and leaving LA is definitely a good move for her. But going back to the island means revisiting the place where her whole family was murdered one night while she luckily escaped after spending the night out with a group of teenagers. The man she saw on the patio when she got home was convicted of the homicides, but recently recovered DNA evidence shows that he was not guilty. So now there has been no accountability for the crime.

"There is much to ponder in this enjoyable, thrilling novel. Hall provides a plethora of red herrings, gives us a protagonist with mental health issues whom we like, and keeps us guessing throughout until the final shocker."

Coco finds out that the island has whitewashed the whole thing. This is ironic because practically the entire island is white, while Coco and her family are pretty much the only Black folks there. Her father, a high school coach and teacher, wanted to live on the island because his commute had been incredibly time-consuming. Her mother was not so happy about the move, complaining about the island's racist past (when Black people couldn't even take the ferry to get to the island) and the dearth of Black residents. Not much has changed in the past two decades, and we see the small snubs as Coco continues to be one of the island's few minorities.

Hall sets the action in March. The cold, rain and fog create a suitably eerie atmosphere and heighten our unease as Coco moves around the island, often looking over her shoulder. Few cars are allowed (the only way to the island is by ferry), and most residents have golf carts to get around. Much of the surrounding real estate has been bought by investors and converted into B&Bs, and too often Coco's driveway is blocked by a visitor's vehicle. Coco gets anonymous messages about how she is not wanted on the island. In fact, someone is sending her fake obituary notices and choosing various ways for her to die, all of which are painful and graphically described. This is another ironic element as one of Coco's responsibilities with the small local paper she works for is to write obituaries, which she had done for a much larger newspaper in LA before moving.

It's brought to Coco's attention that many older women have passed away in the last few months. While they all had health problems, they died outside --- alone --- and from "heart failure." Coco begins to investigate these deaths. Helping her is a fellow journalist, Noah, whose wealthy family has lived on the island. They both work for Maddy, Coco's friend from college and owner of the newspaper. Hall makes it clear from the start that Maddy is a fair-weather friend and not someone Coco really trusts. She has only known Noah for a few weeks, and her aunt is slipping mentally.

Hall deftly moves the action forward by interspersing Coco's clever obits of the deceased women (and Coco herself) with the action, and occasionally providing flashbacks to the day her family was murdered. When they took a tour of the island, Coco remembers that the docent explained how invasive species, plants and animals almost destroyed the island. Her brother unthinkingly spits out a tangerine seed that the docent quickly recovers. She explains how outsiders, like this seed, aren't welcome. We get the idea that she's not just talking about tangerine seeds.

Hall blindsides us at the end with a twist that I didn't see coming. Greed, racism, small-town mentality, fear of the "other" and even flexible moral choices all contribute to making this thriller a bit different from most. The care with which Hall handles presenting a Black protagonist is both subtle and compelling. From her hair weave to the not-so-hidden racism, we see Coco's determination to live on the island, and we wonder why her father wanted to live there so badly.

In real life, there have been many instances of property taken from Black residents, including the recent California case of Bruce's Beach. A Manhattan Beach property that was bought so that Black people could enjoy the ocean in the days of segregation was taken from them under the guise of eminent domain. Another woman is seeking reparations after the town of Santa Monica took her family's property when they were going to build a club for Black people to take full advantage of the beach location. So a California island right off the coast of LA where Black people are not made to feel welcome is not too big of a stretch.

There is much to ponder in this enjoyable, thrilling novel. Hall provides a plethora of red herrings, gives us a protagonist with mental health issues whom we like, and keeps us guessing throughout until the final shocker.

Reviewed by Pamela Kramer on August 4, 2023

What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall

Publication Date: August 1, 2023
Genres: Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
Paperback: 427 pages
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
ISBN-10: 1662504136
ISBN-13: 9781662504136

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Saturday, July 22, 2023

#bookreview: what never happened by rachel howzell hall.

About the Author

Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of We Lie Here ; These Toxic Things ; And Now She’s Gone ; and They All Fall Down ; and, with James Patterson, The Good Sister , which was included in Patterson’s collection The Family Lawyer . A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Rachel is also the author of Land of Shadows , Skies of Ash , Trail of Echoes , and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, Rachel has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. For more information, visit www.rachelhowzell.com.

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