Virginia is a Jill - a job she takes very seriously and loves with her whole heart. Since she was a young girl, dancing has been her obsessive first love. So much so that she puts up with a lot of nonsense for the privilege of dancing before thousands of fans at Sunday home games. Her BFF on the squad is Jeanine and one Sunday Jeanine just doesn't show up for a game. This is a major infraction, a huge no-no, and Virginia is worried. She had been out with Jeanine on Friday night and here comes Sunday and she's nowhere around. She's also not answering any of her texts, which is really odd. Jeanine, for any other faults she may have, always answers Virginia's texts right away. But Virginia's the only one who is really worried - everybody else figures it's Jeanine just being Jeanine - until she continues to stay gone...
I'm not sure if it's my luck lately or if this is "a trend" I'm just now picking up on, but The Jills is one part suspense novel and one part book club fiction - and honestly, it's a marriage that doesn't always work for me. The librarian in my head objectively can tell you that this would make a dynamite book club selection, Parkman gives readers a lot to chew on, but as a reader it feels, at times, overly long.
The world building is top notch. Parkman nails Buffalo, "a drinking town with a football problem." Virginia has Dead Daddy Issues, a former accountant for a local mob boss (who then took on the role of surrogate father), a complicated relationship with her mother, and a very strained relationship with her recovering addict sister, Laura. Virginia, bless her heart, has a White Knight Complex. You know the type. She has abandonment issues that manifest into her wanting to rescue people, essentially saving themselves from their own poor choices. Honestly, she's borderline manic in this behavior and, not gonna lie, she's an exhausting character. Since she carries this book you're trapped in her head the entire time. I spent the entire book wanting to shake her senseless and tell her to cut these people loose, but of course she's tenacious like a terrier. She gets there, eventually, but the author spends a lot of time on diving into the characters, setting everything up, it takes a long time to really dive into the suspense thread (which, and this can't be overstated, is why I picked up this book in the first place).
That said, as manic and exhausting as Virginia is as a character, I got sucked in. Have I mentioned the world building? Have I mentioned I lived in Buffalo for nearly 6 years? And the more emotional scenes with her sister Laura? Tears leaked out. Maybe my soul isn't a dried up charred, smoking husk?
The ending to this book would normally be one that would annoy me in most suspense novels, but Virginia gets her answers, learns some hard truths, and does grow as a person over the course of this story - so it's a win in that respect. Part of me wonders what this story could have been had Parkman decided to subvert the cheerleader stereotype and created Virginia as competent and savvy - but maybe that would have made for a less interesting read for some. Or maybe, and more likely, I spent too much of my impressionable teen years reading mysteries featuring competent female sleuths. Honestly, my money is on the latter.
Final Grade = B-
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