Review: The Sketch Artist - Amanda McKinney
Review: The Sketch Artist - Amanda McKinney - September 2026
I'll admit it: this one caught me before I'd even read the blurb. That cover pulled me in first, all moody and atmospheric, the kind of image that makes you stop scrolling. But what sealed the deal was the setting - a small town creeping up on the 40th anniversary of the Fall Camp Murders, with a horrifying wrinkle: they executed the wrong man. That premise alone had my mind spinning with possibilities before I'd turned a single page.
Our heroine, Harper Leighton, has one of the most fascinating jobs I've come across in a thriller. She's a courtroom sketch artist, she spends her days studying the faces of dangerous people, reading their guilt in the smallest flickers of expression. It's such a clever occupation to build a mystery around, because it means Harper is trained to see what others miss. So when she becomes the one being watched, the irony lands hard.
The story kicks into gear when Harper's aunt dies under circumstances that just don't sit right, and Harper inherits far more than a lake house, she inherits a hidden file and a chilling note in her aunt's handwriting: if you're reading this, he's already killed me. That line alone gave me chills. Inside the file are decades-old courtroom sketches connected to Marrow Lake's most infamous crime, and her aunt's belief that the man executed for it forty years ago was innocent, that the real killer has been walking free this whole time.
As the anniversary approaches, Marrow Lake starts to unravel, tourists showing up for "Camp Ghosts" tours, old-timers muttering about curses, grief that never really healed bubbling back to the surface. That slow unraveling of small-town suspicion is honestly one of my favorite tropes, and it's done really well here.
Harper's investigation into her aunt's final days kept me guessing, and the tension of someone willing to kill to keep old secrets buried had me flipping pages late into the night. It wasn't a flawless read for me, which is why I landed on 3 Ps rather than higher, but it was an atmospheric, twisty ride that scratched that small-town-secrets itch perfectly.
If you love a slow-burn mystery with a haunted history and a heroine who reads faces for a living, add this one to your list.
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