Chase Andrews Character Analysis

Chase Andrews is a widely beloved young man who lives in Barkley Cove. Known in town as one the best former quarterbacks the area has ever seen, Chase is confident and popular. When Chase sees Kya watching him and his friends one day shortly after Tate leaves her, he goes out of his way to speak to her, eventually inviting her for a picnic the following weekend. This outing doesn’t end well, since Chase quickly tries to have sex with Kya without bothering to discern whether or not she’s interested. However, he later convinces her to give him a second chance, admitting that he’s attracted to her “wild” ways but claiming that he just wants to spend time with her. Moving forward, he promises, he’ll never pressure her do anything she doesn’t want. In the coming years, then, they develop a romantic relationship, and he even begins talking to her about getting married, though he never introduces her to his parents or tries to integrate her into his life outside the marsh. Soon enough, Kya discovers that Chase is engaged to be married to a young woman named Pearl, so Kya stops seeing him, though he finds her roughly a year later and tries to rape her. Luckily, Kya escapes, but she senses that he will come back for her. This is the story that ultimately drives the novel’s plot, as readers learn in the first chapter that Chase has been murdered and are therefore invited to wonder if Kya was the killer as they follow the events that led up to his death. Since Kya was allegedly spotted near the crime scene on the night of the murder, and Chase’s body was found missing the shell necklace that Kya had given to him, Chase’s mother, Patti Love (among others in the community), believe that Kya is the culprit. Although Kya is officially found not guilty for the crime, it later becomes clear that she did, in fact, murder Chase when Tate discovers the shell necklace and a confessional poem under the floorboards of their house after Kya’s death.