To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart

In college, four artists named Tess, Henry, Suz, and Winnie began calling themselves the Compassionate Dismantlers whose motto was: “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.” Moving to a reclusive lakeside cabin after graduation, they carry out elaborate pranks and escalating acts of vandalism with the intent to take things apart to reveal the underlying truth. The Dismantler schtick often comes off as pretentious and arrogant, but you don’t have to agree with them or even like them, you’re just meant to understand that this was a wild, imaginative group of friends at a time in their lives when they think they are going to revolutionize the world as the Dismantlers. Suz is the dynamic force spearheading the group; when she dies during a prank gone wrong, the others decide to sink her body in the lake and quietly dismantle the group.

Nine years later, Tess and Henry are married with a nine-year-old daughter Emma who was conceived that summer. Emma is a quirky child with OCD and an imaginary friend named Danner. Although living on the same property, Tess and Henry are separated, and Emma decides to find a way to reunite them. Discovering Suz’s old journal in Henry’s workshop, she sends postcards to the old Dismantlers with only the Dismantler motto on it, hoping that a reunion of old college friends will make her parents remember they love each other. Instead, the postcards set off an unintended series of events. Spencer Styles (a proxy Dismantler) hangs himself, and strange occurrences start to lead Tess and Henry to think that they are being haunted by Suz.

Dismantled contains familiar elements: a group of friends with secrets, shady past resurfacing, a dead character who was pivotal in the lives of the living, and so on. However, they’re combined in a unique way to make a thoroughly enjoyable mystery. As soon as one part of the story starts to come together, the next chapter would introduce another element that changed the perspective. The mystery becomes progressively creepier, including one scene where Danner the imaginary friend tells Emma the answer to a riddle that Suz made up. I appreciate a suspense novel that can manage to get under your skin without resorting to bloody piles of dead bodies for the shock factor.

A common complaint on Goodreads is that certain aspects of the story were too ridiculous to reasonably accept (particularly Emma’s involvement), but I disagree. McMahon purposely wove a supernatural, spooky impression throughout the whole story; most of it was later explained away as the mystery was revealed, but I thought that she obviously left at least one part with a possible supernatural explanation. I can see how some of the technical details might have been unreasonable, but I was enjoying the ride too much to care.