Publication Date: August 24, 2021
Publisher: Mira Books
Pages: 304
Genre: Thriller: Domestic
Rating: 3.5/5
This book starts off with our main character, Whitney, dropping her 16 year old daughter, Amelia, off at her friends house where things start to quickly unravel. The next day Amelia’s phone is off and the place where Whitney dropped her off at doesn’t know who she is talking about. As Whitney is trying to figure out where Amelia is, she not only realizes that she doesn’t know her daughter as well as she thought she did, but also her past might be coming back to haunt her.
I was hooked instantly when I started reading this book because Garza did such a great job of reeling me in with her great pacing and storytelling. Whitney’s urgency in finding her daughter really shone through and rubbed off on me and I felt like I was right there with her. That being said, Whitney is a character I didn’t particularly like and definitely didn’t identify with in any way. She is also somehow overbearing but also clueless which was an odd juxtaposition. Garza sprinkles lots of reveals into the story that are both surprising but also help set up the end of the story in a masterful way. Things were constantly building and I was enjoying the ride and then things quickly derailed for me at the end.
First, I wasn’t expecting where this book was going to go and while I’m not particularly sensitive to most topics I do find a couple to be hard to read and one was a big part of the ending. I have linked a Trigger Warning above that will link to a specific Goodreads review if you want to check them out. I don’t want to explicitly say them because it would spoil the whole ending but I do think it is important to include them. Secondly, the ending was so unbelievable that it completely took me out of the story. I feel like Garza could have spent some time and developed it more and it would have been a much stronger ending.
While I did have some issues with this book I still enjoyed it overall. If you are looking for a book that you will fly through during a weekend that will completely capture your attention and you think you can handle the trigger warnings and a possible disappointing ending then I do recommend you should check it out. I am a big fan of Garza’s writing and I recently saw that she has written romance in the past so I plan to dive into her backlist sometime soon.
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