The Anniversary by Alex Finlay [Book Review]

One night in 1992. A decade of wreckage. Read my review of The Anniversary by Alex Finlay and find out why I gave the book 4.25/5 stars.

Well, this one came in swinging.

I picked up The Anniversary expecting a solid, fast-moving thriller. You know the kind: dark secret, sharp turns, one suspicious character who practically walks around with dramatic lighting following them.

Alex Finlay delivers on that front. Completely.

But what makes this book more interesting than a simple “who did it?” is the structure. It keeps returning to the anniversary of one terrible night in 1992.

What is the book about?

Every Year He Comes For Them.

On one fateful night in 1992, the lives of two seventeen-year-olds are changed and intertwined forever. Quinn Riley, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, is arrested after he innocently tries to break up a fight but ends up nearly killing someone. Jules Delaney, high school royalty, survives an attack by the elusive and terrifying May Day Killer—a serial predator who strikes every May 1st in midwestern small towns.

A year later, Jules is struggling with trauma and guilt, tormented by one question: Why was I spared? Quinn is newly released from juvenile detention and returns home to fresh the unsolved murder of his mother.

Over the next decade, their lives are revisited on a single day each year—May 1st. As secrets unravel and the paths of Quinn and Jules collide, two mysteries edge closer to the truth. All the while, the May Day Killer is still out there—and the clock is racing toward another May 1st.

My thoughts:

The story follows Quinn Riley and Jules Delaney, two people whose lives are permanently connected by violence. Quinn lands in juvenile detention after a fight goes horribly wrong. Jules survives an attack by the May Day Killer, a serial predator who strikes every May 1st. That setup alone is grim enough. But Finlay builds the book around a clever structure: each section checks in on May 1st in a different year, slowly revealing what really happened, what people have been hiding, and whether the danger is actually in the past.

I’m a sucker for this kind of structure when it works. And, here, it works. It’s like the serial killer version of One Day.

Every return to May 1st adds another reason to question who’s telling the truth — and who has simply gotten better at surviving. The chapters are tight. The tension builds. The reveals mostly feel earned rather than yanked from the ether at the last second.

Are some twists easier to spot than others? Yes. Will longtime thriller readers recognize familiar ingredients? Also yes. But I didn’t mind. Not every thriller needs to remake the genre from scratch. Sometimes it just needs to grab your attention, keep the pages moving, and make the ending somehow satisfying.

That’s where The Anniversary shines.

Underneath the twists runs a real emotional current — about trauma, memory, guilt, and the strange way one night can echo throughout a lifetime. The mystery is fun. The human fallout gives it weight. By the end, Finlay had done exactly what he came to do: entertain me, unsettle me, and leave me satisfied.

It’s the kind of book that makes you say “just one more chapter” even when you know you are absolutely lying to yourself.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced reader’s copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Find me on Goodreads, Fable, and StoryGraph.