Life on Santa Catalina Island seems idyllic and carefree, but in “What Never Happened,” Rachel Howzell Hall imagines the dark side of the serene, secluded, and supposedly safe vacation spot. Protagonist Colette, also known as Coco, is back on the island after a failed marriage which brought her close to a breakdown. Her aging aunt, who lives on the island, needs help. While they’ve never been close, her Auntie Gwen helped raise Coco, and she feels that she has to help Gwen now that it’s needed.
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 she’s 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 whom she saw on the patio when she got home was convicted of the crime, but recently recovered DNA evidence shows he didn’t commit the murders, so now there has been no accountability for the crime.
And what Coco finds out is that the island has whitewashed the whole thing. Ironic because practically the whole island is white, while Coco and her family were pretty much the only Black folks there. Her father, the 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, and the cold and 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 resident 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, and someone is sending her fake obituary notices for her own death, choosing various diverse and creative methods for her dying, all of which are painful and graphically described in the notice. The obituary notices are another ironic element as one of Coco’s responsibilities with the small local paper she is working for is to write obituaries, which she had done for a much larger newspaper in LA before moving.
It’s brought to Coco’s notice that many older women have died in the past few months, and while they were all old with age’s attendant health problems, they all 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 Coco’s friend from college, and owner of the newspaper, Maddy. Hall makes it clear from the start that Maddy is definitely a fair-weather friend to Coco, and not really someone Coco trusts. She’s just known Noah for a few weeks, and her aunt is slipping mentally, and not anyone whom Coco really ever trusted much.
Hall deftly moves the action forward by interspersing Coco’s clever obits of the deceased women (and Coco) with the action, and occasionally providing flashbacks to the day Coco’s family was murdered. When her family 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 which the docent quickly recovers. She explains how outsiders, like this seed, aren’t welcome. We definitely get the idea that she’s not just talking about tangerine seeds.
Hall blindsides us at the end with a twist that we didn’t see coming. At least I didn’t. Greed, racism, small-town mentality, fear of the “other,” and even flexible moral choices all contribute to making this thriller a bit different than 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 Coco’s father wanted so badly to live there.
In real life, there are many instances of property taken from Black residents, including the recent California case of Bruce’s Beach, in which a Manhattan Beach property 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 enjoy the beach location. So a California island, right off the coast of LA, where Black people are not made to feel welcome is not much of a stretch.
There is much to ponder in this enjoyable, thrilling novel. Hall provides a plethora of red herrings, gives us a protagonist who definitely has mental health issues but whom we like, and keeps us guessing throughout until the final shocker.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.
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