Book ~ "The Breakdown" (2017) B.A. Paris

From Goodreads ~ If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods, on the winding rural road, in the middle of a downpour, with the woman sitting inside - the woman who was killed. She’s been trying to put the crime out of her mind; what could she have done, really? It’s a dangerous road to be on in the middle of a storm. Her husband would be furious if he knew she’d broken her promise not to take that shortcut home. And she probably would only have been hurt herself if she’d stopped.

But since then, she’s been forgetting every little thing: where she left the car, if she took her pills, the alarm code, why she ordered a pram when she doesn’t have a baby.

The only thing she can’t forget is that woman, the woman she might have saved, and the terrible nagging guilt.

Or the silent calls she’s receiving, or the feeling that someone’s watching her.

Cass is coming home one night in a storm and takes a shortcut Matthew, her husband, told her not to take.  As she is on the road, she comes across a car that was parked on the road.  She pauses to see if the driver needs help but left when they give no indication of being in trouble.  Cass finds out the next day that the driver had been murdered.  This weighs on her mind and she feels really guilty ... had she stopped, perhaps the woman would still be alive.  And she can't talk to Matthew about it because then he would know she took the shortcut.  When Cass finds out that the woman was a someone she knew, she feels even worse.  When she starts getting phone calls every day all day long and there's no one on the other end, she is scared and paranoid the murderer saw her and that she's next.

In the meantime, Cass is getting forgetful.  Her mother had recently passed away from early onset dementia and Cass is concerned that it is happening to her.  She loses her car, she forgets how to use their appliances, she orders things from the shopping channel but doesn't remember doing it, etc.  She has the support of Matthew and her best friend, Rachel, but they eventually start losing patience with her.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I enjoyed it.  It is written in first person perspective from Cass' point of view.  I thought the story moved along well at a good pace and kept me interested to get to the end to see "whodunnit".  The ending was a good twist.

I look forward to reading other books by this author.