This is marketed as a thriller, and I honestly have a bone to pick with that. But first, a little backstory on the story.

Riley becomes a caretaker for an elderly woman named Betty. Betty tells her she’d like to find her friends, whom she hasn’t seen since 1964. Riley sets off to find out where these three ladies have gone. In the past, the four women volunteer for some psychic experiments at a university. For most of the book, you know you’re moving toward what separated the friends, but you don’t know why.

I felt like this was more of a creepy-vibes friendship story than any kind of thriller. Both in the present and in the past, you have women creating connections, even with a sense of uncertainty around them.

The last 20% of the book felt like an escalation and a thriller, but the rest of the book did not. The ending, while nice, was also a little too neat for me. You never fully understand what went on in 1964 to the extent that I would want. And I didn’t feel like I got enough resolution on the doctor who started it all.

I think I was hoping for a creepy thriller that leaned toward horror. The setup sounds like it could lean into horror. The title The Women in White feels cultish, and you have parapsychology experiments and women disappearing in 1964.  For me, it didn’t go hard enough into thriller territory. If I sat with the four women becoming friends who supported each other and read it more like historical fiction, I could enjoy the story. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for.