The Scapegoat by Sara Davis with Luyt Pipeno

Perhaps because this book-and-wine club got its start in the Fall, or perhaps because Fall is the time of year I first feel that kind of atmospheric pressure (possibly, threat) that has me burrowing deep under the blankets with a second glass of wine, it seems fitting that we begin this new season of books and wine with a thriller. A thrill of sorts, I mean. It is difficult to describe what The Scapegoat by Sara Davis is as a whole, and perhaps it’s a novel best described by its components: at least some part of this novel is a mystery, though perhaps not the part you think is mysterious from the start. I would call it in part a thrill—thrilling perhaps, in the way one becomes preoccupied with identifying “the whiff of a familiar scent” that is “constantly on the edges, pressing in” without ever revealing its source. It is a novel made up almost entirely of unreliable thoughts: a tenebrous fog of a narrative that might be difficult for some, but whose mysterious weight I found comple