The Storm

Happy book birthday to The Storm by Rachel Hawkins! I read her first thriller, The Wife Upstairs, three years ago, and I’m excited to be getting back into her books.

The Storm is set between 1984 and 2025 at a seaside town in Alabama. A hurricane in 1984 claimed the life of the rising politician, Landon Fitzroy… but many believed that his teenaged lover Lo Bailey actually murdered him. She was never charged, but now, 40 years later, she’s ready to tell her side of the story in a memoir. Lo and her ghost writer August are staying at the Rosalie Inn, run by money-strapped Geneva, and though Geneva is hoping for a financial windfall from their stay, she may be in for more thrills than she ever anticipated as another hurricane approaches. What really happened 40 years ago, and how will it impact everyone still around today?

What I Liked:

• Dual timeline. I enjoyed both the 1984 timeline and the 2025 one. Both have a slow buildup of low-stakes drama that becomes more intense by the end. There are some twists and surprises here! Some I saw coming, others caught me off guard.
• Dissecting the teenage seductress vs. victim. This theme feels particularly pertinent right now. Lo was 19 when she started a relationship with 30-year-old Landon, a married man with a lot of money and a rising political career. Beautiful as Lo was, people assumed she was promiscuous and seduced Landon. But it becomes very clear that she—and other teenagers!—were more victims of Landon’s predatory nature. How do these truths shed new light on the events of 1984?
• Female friendship. Growing up, Lo had two best friends, and though they go their separate ways over the years, I liked seeing how that friendship ultimately plays out in the two timelines.
• Memoir excerpts and other mixed media. I always love when novels include extra media; it really adds to the world-building and gives more context. Here, we get newspaper articles, interviews with locals, excerpts from the manuscript, and more. They were some of my favorite parts of the book.

Audio:

The audiobook version of The Storm comes with a full case of narrators: Alex Knox, Cathi Colas, Dan Bittner, Jane Oppenheimer, Patti Murin, Petrea Burchard, and Stephanie Németh-Parker. All provided excellent narration! I appreciated the accents they gave different characters, making for greater immersion in the Alabama setting. We also get an especially great voice for Lo Bailey. As Lo is told early in the book, she has striking way of speaking, and that is done justice in this audiobook.

Final Thoughts

The Storm is a solid thriller that’s focused on the slowly increasing tensions between friends, lovers, and family members. It contrasts the effects of real natural disasters (hurricanes!) vs. the damage regular people can do. I enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of Rachel Hawkins’s thrillers.

Special thanks to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Storm here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Storm by Rachel Hawkins
Audiobook Narrator	Alex Knox; Cathi Colas; Dan Bittner; Jane Oppenheimer; Patti Murin; Petrea Burchard; Stephanie Németh-Parker
Audience	Adult
Genre	Thriller
Setting	Alabama
Number of Pages	288
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	January 6, 2025
Publisher	St. Martin’s Press

Official Summary

HURRICANE SEASON CAN BE MURDER • A January 2026 Indie Next Pick • “Sexy and full of surprises, The Storm is an ideal curl-up-by-the-fire read.” —Real Simple

St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.

When Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard’s Bay on the map, she’s less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn’s bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn’t come to St. Medard’s Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she’s returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.

As the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive—and as deadly—as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping…