It's so nice to read a mystery that kept me guessing and hooked to the story, that made me read with a held breath and worried. Jackal starts slowly, building up the tensions until I felt I couldn't stop reading. From the beginning that felt a bit like a Hallmark movie, with a successful businesswoman coming back from a big city to her small racist hometown for her best friend's wedding. Liz is fresh from a bad breakup and doesn't want to be back home, but she came back for her friend, and oh, there's also an old flame from high school at the ceremony, what a setup to the romcom, except, oh no, her friend's kid goes missing in the woods, she feels guilty, wants to help find her and suddenly we're neck deep into dead girls. Because her godchild is not the first black girl that went missing in the woods. And most of the missing girls usually show up dead and missing their hearts. To find her godchild alive, Liz needs to dig deeper into the mystery of the town, the killed girls, and her own repressed memories.

This was a chilling book to read. It obviously deals with heavy topics: all the overt and subtle ways racism manifests, the pain of grief, survivor's guilt, class versus race, abuse, Black girlhood and womanhood, and the monsters, both human and supernatural. It's mostly a thriller mystery kind of book, with a bit of horror that spices it up really nicely if you ask me. Especially since the topic it deals with is very horrifying. Also, the opening chapter? Amazing.

Audiobook was really good, it was very easy to get lost in it, narrated by Sandra Okuboyejo and William DeMeritt. William DeMeritt especially did a good job making his part of the narration chilling.