Search Results for: Lisa Jewell

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell #Giveaway

August 4, 2014 by Jennifer

Lisa Jewell has never disappointed me, and The House We Grew Up In is certainly no different. Jewell portrays a family full of people with flaws, but they are still likable or at least understandable in their own ways.

The beginning of the novel was a little tough for me, because it was skipping around in time, featuring the life of the Bird family in the past, plus what was happening in the present with some relatively present emails from Lorelei to Jim.

The flashbacks center around Easter Sunday, a holiday important to Lorelei, not for religious reasons,but for the festivities that she likes to create. One Easter something awful happens to Rhys, and it changes everyone in the family, pulling them further and further apart.

This is a complex novel of complicated characters, but it’s not quite as dark as it sounds. I was riveted and tried to squeeze as much reading time as I could to figure out what happened to Rhys, why Lorelei got the way she was, how she and Colin split, what caused Beth and Megan to stop speaking, and more.

Read my full review at 5 Minutes for Mom and enter to win a copy as well.

Then She Was Gone

April 17, 2018 by Nancy

Every once in a while a book comes along that just sucks you in. I am not a fan of the term unputdownable, but there really is no other way to describe a book like Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, now available in the US.

When 15-year-old Ellie Mack goes missing, the police conclude she’s run away. But her mother, Laurel, can’t believe her daughter, who had a boyfriend and was looking forward to her exams, would leave her family behind. The only sign of Ellie is a break-in 4 years after she disappeared, and the items that were taken lead Laurel to believe it was Ellie, though the police don’t agree.

10 years later, Laurel’s marriage has broken up, her other daughter Hanna barely acknowledges her presence, and new clues to Ellie’s disappearance have suddenly turned up. Then Laurel meets Floyd. He’s charming and funny, and Laurel is ready to put her past behind her. When Laurel meets Floyd’s daughter, Poppy, she’s shocked at how much she resembles Ellie, and she realizes her past isn’t as behind her as she thought.

Then She Was Gone is mostly told from Laurel’s point of view, but we do eventually learn what happened to Ellie in her own words, as well as first person perspective from another character whose involvement isn’t clear until well into the book. It’s a bit confusing in the beginning as details are revealed but it doesn’t take long to figure out where the story is going, though there are a few pieces of the puzzle that are withheld until the very end.

Any book that causes me to miss out on sleep and sneak in a few pages here and there when I’m supposed to be doing other things is one I highly recommend.

The Girls in the Garden

June 15, 2016 by Jennifer

I have become a huge fan of Lisa Jewell. Ever since I read my first novel by her, I’ve eagerly awaited each of her next releases (see below for links to my other reviews). As always, this novel contained some human drama, uncovering who did what and why, but there is also a bona-fide whodunnit at the heart of this novel, which gives it a different feel. The fact that the novel opens with a 13-year-old’s girl’s body being found in the yard after a neighborhood party starts it off on a darker note. That said, the fact that much of it is told through the eyes of her 11-year-old sister Pip lightens the feel considerably. She tells it like it is, but the childish understanding of events is different than the concern of a mother’s heart or the sinister thoughts of the perpetrator.

After the brief introduction to the scene of the crime, the novel switches to “Before,” recounting events of the previous months. As the characters are introduced, I was skeptical of everyone as the possible culprit. Was it the over-familiar dad who lived nearby? The mentally disabled young adult who hung out with the young teens? The lecherous old man staying with family as he recovers from surgery? Her own father, recently hospitalized for mental illness? One of the other teens?

We get to know what brought Grace and Pip and their mother to this somewhat communal living space — a group of homes and townhomes that open up onto a central garden. We learn about the other families who live there — some for generations — as well as some of their secrets. Grace, who angrily avoids the topic of her father, takes to the other kids and families easily. Her sister Pip writes to her father, telling him about the goings on in their new house, as well as hoping for his quick return to them. She doesn’t feel the kinship with the others that Grace does, and mostly stands by as an observer. Her sister’s rapid maturing — physically and in attitude — surprises and confuses Pip, making her feel even less like one of the gang.

The “Before” section continues right up until the crime takes place, and then switches to “After,” in which the family and others seek to find out what happened to Grace and why.

I was wholly satisfied with The Girls in the Garden. The element of mystery added to the page-turning nature of the novel, but at the core, it’s still a novel about the characters: their choices, how their pasts shape their presents and that of their loved ones, second-chances, and growing up.

Other novels by Lisa Jewell I’ve enjoyed (in order of preference)

The Third Wife

June 28, 2015 by Jennifer

Lisa Jewell is one of the authors who I can count on. I’ve read her last several releases and loved them. She writes get character-fueled drama, with complex characters who struggle with insecurities, deficiencies or just the stuff that life throws their way, but still stay likable and round, not flattened by their circumstances.

The Third Wife opens with the unusual death of a woman, Maya Wolfe, who steps in front of a bus in the wee hours of the morning after hours of drinking. Was it accidental? A suicide? Or was she pushed?

These are the questions which The Third Wife tries to answer throughout the novel. Jewell uses her signature style of revealing bits of the past to clear up this question, while advancing the story forward in the future.

There’s a fairly large cast of main characters, because Adrian Wolfe has created an interesting blended family. His first wife with his adult kids Luke and Cat, his second wife with the school-aged kids Otis, Pearl, and baby Beau (for which Cat from first marriage nannies), and the third wife all go on vacation together each year and regularly. It seems amicable, but we learn from narrative from Maya’s POV in the past that she’s had insecurities, bolstered by hate emails that she’s been receiving regularly and keeping to herself.

In addition to the emails, which are discovered after her death, there’s a mysterious woman who presumably came around to adopt Maya’s cat, but has actually appeared to be stalking them. Several of Adrian’s supposedly well-adjusted children are showing signs of stress. Cat has gained a lot of weight, Luke has all-but extricated himself from the family, Pearl is growing quieter and quieter, and something strange is going on with Owen.

Maya seemed full of light and laughter, but in this novel, Jewell reveals the truth that things are not always they seem.

There are dark parts to this novel, but it’s not a dark novel. The characters are wonderful and the storytelling is done well. It’s not my favorite Lisa Jewell novel, but I did enjoy it. Click through the link to see others that I enjoyed, with The Making of Us probably being my favorite.

Our Favorite Reads of 2014

December 29, 2014 by 5 Minutes for Books

As a team, we wanted to put together our top 14 reads for 2014 for our weekly column at 5 Minutes for Mom. We did that, so please click through those links to see what they are. It was a great idea, but we had a problem. Take 5 booklovers who read many books each year, and 14 books didn’t begin to cover it.

Check out our top 14 over there, along with 18 of our other favorites right here:

DAWN:

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez — With deep character development, this novel explores the idea of what it means to be an American, following several members of a diverse immigrant community in Delaware. The collective narratives reveal a variety of perspectives about the immigrant experience, and readers may find their eyes open to points of view they’ve never imagined before.

All I Love and Know by Judith Frank — Opening with a tragedy, and telling the story of a family dealing with the aftermath, this novel goes to dark places that confront important current social and political issues. Making the abstract quite personal through the stories of complex, flawed, and very realistic characters gives this novel a serious tone. One to be enjoyed for its expert writing as well as its thought-provoking nature.

Crooked River by Valerie Geary — A shadowy mystery novel that reads like literary fiction, this one had me chewing on my nails, unable to put it down until a resolution came. Readers will likely find themselves questioning their early assumptions, and then revisiting their new assessments, as well. Though the plot revolves around the mysterious death of a young reporter visiting a small town, the dark scenes are not gratuitous, and I even passed this along to my teenage son.

JENNIFER

We are Called to Rise by Laura McBride was not only a good book but an excellent audiobook listen. It’s one of those books that hit contemporary issues such as city growth, immigration, parenting, ennui and so much more, in a way that didn’t feel preachy or like she was trying to write a socially important novel. This is her first novel, and I know I’ll be checking out her second.

Glitter and Glue is a memoir by Kelly Corrigan. I don’t know if everyone will respond to it as I did, but it hit me in all the right places. It’s about her own, somewhat strained, relationship with her mother, flashbacks of her own years navigating early adulthood, becoming a mother herself, her worry about leaving her kids too soon as she battles cancer. Sounds grim, but she’s so funny and intuitive that reading it makes you feel like you know her or she knows you.

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell pulled me along. It’s a novel of a dysfunctional family that somehow highlights the function and dysfunction in all of us. Many of these characters had secrets and Jewell unraveled the story at a perfect pace that had me squeezing in as much reading as I could so that I could find out the hows and whys of their actions.

NANCY

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen — The author’s own battle with breast cancer is clear in this novel about a woman who finally wakes up after a year of being figuratively asleep since her husband’s death.

Season of the Dragonflies by Sarah Creech — The prodigal daughter returns to her family perfume business in this magical realism tale.

House of Wonder by Sarah Healy — This novel explores beauty in its multitude of forms, including pageant queens, a centuries-old tree, and the innocence of children.

House of Glass by Sophie Littlefield — This page-turning suspense novel reads like a Lifetime movie on paper, and not in a bad way, when a family is held at gunpoint by two men in the basement of their own home.

ELIZABETH

Queen of the Tearling: Author Erika Johansen imagines a world in which humanity attempted to begin anew in a sort of utopia, only to find themselves within a few hundred years living in a sort of medieval world, with horses as transportation and swords and arrows for weapons, and feudalism and sex-trafficking and slavery all functioning as well. But the story opens with a bookish and isolated girl hiding in a tree, watching the horsemen come and knowing this is the day her life irrevocably changes. The best YA book I read this year. It’s the start of a trilogy, a gripping and well-told tale that combines a coming-of-age story, a book about social justice, and a fantasy world.

Truth about Harry Quebert Affair: This book is just really fun to read. The characters are drawn with realism and compassion, and the story-line is full of twists and turns. There are meditations on life, the publishing and marketing industries, how the past affects the present, and much more, but the bulk of the book is simply a good story.

The Invisible Girls (memoir/Christian): Written with raw honesty and compassion, The Invisible Girls combines 2 stories; author Sarah Thebarge’s struggle with cancer and the invisibility imposed on her by her family, and the invisibility of a Somali refugee family whom Sarah encounters on public transportation one day, and with whom she gets inextricably involved. This is a realistic book without sentimentality, a story of courage and faith.

In Paradise: This isn’t an easy book to read, but it’s an important one. The framework is fairly simple: an ecumenical group of people gather for a week during the winter of 1996 at Auschwitz to “bear witness” to the atrocities committed there through prayer and meditation. However, this novel isn’t an exercise in cheap emotion at the cost of others pain. It instead looks long and hard at why such atrocities can happen, and at how the complicity of others allows them to happen, all wrapped up in this framework of people who care coming to a retreat in a place where something horrible happened, to remember. And although the ending isn’t particularly happy, it is satisfying nonetheless.

One Night in Winter: Set in Stalin’s Moscow in June, 1945, this book blends historical fact and fiction flawlessly as it looks at an oppressive regime’s reaction to the excesses of adolescent love of romanticism after a game goes wrong and 2 teens from powerful families end up dead. Yet this is ultimately a story about love and the places we find it, and what we are willing to give up for it–or not give up for it. This is a gripping read, filled with unexpected twists and turns and a satisfying denouement.

How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky: I had Kindle issues (my fault, it turned out, months later) so I never did write this one up for review, but it’s a really unusual and well-written story that I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend. Two close friends decide to have children at the same time, raise them identically but separately, and in that way prepare them to be “soul mates” whose experiences inexplicably match. It’s a crazy idea and the people involved are really flawed, but this book is magical. The introduction had me hooked beyond recovery.

MICHELLE

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness is the third book in her All Souls trilogy, and it fixes everything that was wrong with the second book. Once again, Diana and Matthew are central characters in the present day, and the book is filled with action and intrigue as they search for the secret of Ashmole 82. The characters are compelling, and their problems and challenges rope you in. This is one of those “I’ll just read one more chapter” books, and I can only hope that although this was meant to be a trilogy, Deborah Harkness has something new up her sleeve, as hinted at near the end of The Book of Life.

After the Funeral by Agatha Christie is a book I read years ago, much like the majority of all Agatha Christie mysteries. I hadn’t picked one up in years until this version was recently rereleased. Dame Agatha has and amazing ability to develop a mystery that never quite turns out the way you want with characters so flawed that you feel like you should despise them but yet you never can. After the Funeral is no different, with Hercule Poirot as arrogant as ever called in to determine who killed Cora Lansquenet and plenty of suspects all of whom seem to have a motive. It’s never who you suspect it will be, and even though you know you’re being led on a merry chase, you’re happy to take the journey to discover the true villain.

Big Little Lies, a 5-Star Read

December 17, 2014 by Jennifer

There are a few international women’s fiction writers who have exploded as of late here in the U.S. JoJo Moyes is the prime example, Lisa Jewell is a new favorite of mine and is successfully gaining traction, and now there’s no doubt that Australian Liane Moriarty is in that club as well, perhaps the queen with all the attention this book has gotten this year.

Earlier this year, I listened to the newly-published-on-audio Three Wishes. I liked it, and could see that she had that ability to balance plot, told with humor and suspense, with that “something more” bit of social commentary designed to make you think about the issues of our day while also grappling with the idea of right and wrong. Big Little Lies is a perfect example of this. The characters have their secrets, most of which are secreted away from the reader until Moriarty chooses to reveal them, and knowing them changes how we feel about them.

This book has been under $4 on Kindle for a while (as has Three Wishes), so I snatched it up to read on a long car trip last weekend. It was the perfect diversion. I loved each twist and turn these characters took. From the beginning of the book, the reader is privy to the fact that one of the school parents died at the school trivia night. Other parents are interviewed throughout the book, giving tidbits about the personality clashes and scandals that might have contributed. As I read, my mind was churning, trying to predict who might have died and whom had a part in it.

It sounds intense, but what really took this novel to the next level for me was the humor. Yes, the social commentary was right on, yes it was a gripping, suspenseful and surprising read, but it was so funny as well. I grew to love these characters (or hate them, where appropriate), but I couldn’t see how it could end in a way that would please me, and yet it did. Some of the cast of characters includes:

Madeline is sort of the queen of the group. She tells it like it is, is very self-aware that this is somewhat of a flaw, yet maintains her devil-may-care attitude. On the way to the preview day of her youngest child’s Kindergarten year, she twists her ankle.
New-to-the-school Jane comes to her aid. Jane is young, mistaken by many to be a nanny, and she’s guarded socially. She’s moved around a lot with her son Ziggy, but she somehow feels a connection to the people in Australian coast town Pirriwee, even though her gentle son is accused of bullying on that very first morning.
Celeste joins Madeline and Jane at coffee that first morning, disappointed that it wasn’t “just the two of us” as Madeline promised. She’s beautiful –beyond beautiful, really– and rich and kind, but she seems to be trying to hide some sort of social anxiety.

Rounding out the cast of Pirriwee Public are the high-powered working moms, a stay-at-home dad, Madeline’s ex-husband and his new-age wife, whose daughter is in her daughter’s class, the Blonde Bob PTA mothers, and the sweet Kindergarten teacher caught in the middle of it all.

Go read it. Download it now so you can sneak bits of it on your phone or your ereader as you’re riding from house to house over the holidays, or perhaps to give yourself a much-needed respite from cleaning or shopping or wrapping. Better yet, buy it for that reader on your list, perhaps the person who loves a good read but doesn’t give herself the time to enjoy it. Once she starts this one, she won’t be able to stop.

Before I Met You

December 28, 2013 by Jennifer

Lisa Jewell is a fairly new-to-me author who I’ve enjoyed discovering. Before I Met You lived up to my expectation for a moving family drama.

Betty moves into her stepfather’s mother’s home on a remote English island when she’s a young girl so that they can look after her. Arlette is strong-willed even as her mind is beginning to go. Though there’s no blood tie, Betty and Arlette hit it off right away. In fact, once Betty is out of college, her mother and stepfather move out, and offer to get nursing care for Arlette in her last months, so that Betty can start her own life, but she can’t imagine doing that. She stays with her until the end.

When she dies, she leaves her fabulous vintage clothes and jewelry to Betty along with a small amount of money. She leaves the majority of her money to a woman named Clara Pickle, stipulating that if they don’t find her in 6 months, Betty will get the money. There are a few clues, so Betty goes off to London to try to find her. Betty finds pictures of Arlette as a young girl in the 20’s, posing with a Black jazz trio. That and a program gives Betty a trail to follow, if not to find out who Clara is, at least to find out more about Arlette.

The narrative switches back and forth between Arlette’s life in the 20’s, doing such unexpected things as posing for a painter, and living it up, to Betty’s life trying to make ends meet. She works at a fast food restaurant, deals with quirky neighbors, and gets to know the record seller out front. She also spies on a famous musician in an apartment across the way and ends up working as his nanny.

The story is moving and unexpected. I was pulled along as Betty and Arlette find out who they are and what they are made of, living lives 70 years apart.

What’s On Your Nightstand, November 26

November 26, 2013 by Jennifer

Last month I posted my reading list, consisting mostly of Cybils Middle Grade Fiction, right here on the main post. It seemed pretty daunting, but guess what? I read all of those books and more. Well, to be fair, I didn’t finish a few of them, but I did read a good enough portion to form an opinion.

This month? Well, I actually started an adult fiction book by Lisa Jewell, Before I Met You, because I needed something different. So I’ll probably finish that, while still reading plenty of middle grade fiction including

There may be more. I may not get to all of them. We’ll see.

And now it’s your turn. Please link up a post and tell me what you’ve read this last month OR what you are planning to read this month (or both).

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The Shortest Way Home {with Giveaway}

October 28, 2012 by Jennifer

I loved this book. I loved it from start to finish, front cover to last word. The Shortest Way Home is a book that brought me great satisfaction while reading it — pulling at my heartstrings in just the right way, and engaging me into these wonderfully written characters.

It got me to thinking about what other books gave me that perfect balance of character development and growth with a healthy helping of heart. These are all linked to my review:

After You by Julie Buxbaum
Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos
The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell
Deep Down True by Juliette Fay
The World Without You by Joshua Henkin

You can check out these reviews as well, but be sure to read my full review of The Shortest Way Home at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Comments are closed to remind you to leave your comment on my full review at 5 Minutes for Mom so that you can enter to win a copy.

The Making of Us

September 15, 2012 by Jennifer

I started this book one weekend, knowing I had an extra day, Labor Day, with not much planned. I was looking for an engrossing novel that I could get lost in, but that wasn’t too high-brow or literary. The Making of Us fit the bill perfectly, and in fact I finished it Monday afternoon.

When I first started it, it definitely seemed light, yet still completely “other” due to the English setting and characters (Is it just me? The writing and plot could be trash, but if it’s British, that automatically makes it seem more highbrow.). However, I was a little put off by the language and some of the behaviors, until I realized that most of them were presented to show the mess that the characters were in which caused them to make poor choices in effort to mask their pain or fears or insecurities. We gotta set them up to change, right? Plus, when the novel starts off most of them are in their teens or early 20’s, and that fact alone caused me to give them a bye, since people that age generally make poor decisions due to their immaturity.

The novel is told by using different characters’ point of views in alternating chapters. I didn’t love most of them when I first “met” them, but they definitely intrigued me. And the more I got to know them, the more I fell in love with them. It was one of those books that was so good I cried. By the end, I was a blubbering mess. It ended well; not unrealistically tidy — but SO satisfying.

I pretty much always feel this way, but this novel is definitely one that you want to unfold as you read it, not via inadvertently spilled in a summary or review. I think that the publisher’s descriptions gives you enough information to clue you in, but nothing that is a spoiler:

Lydia, Dean and Robyn don’t know one another. Yet. Each is facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood. Wealthy and successful, she leads a lonely and disjointed existence. Dean is a young, unemployed, single dad whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is eighteen. Gorgeous, popular and intelligent, she entered her first year of college confident of her dream to become a pediatrician. Now she’s failing her classes and she’s falling in love for the first time.

Lydia, Dean and Robyn live very different lives, but each of them, independently, has always felt that something was missing. What they don’t know is that a letter is about to arrive that will turn their lives upside down. It is a letter containing a secret—one that will bind them together and show them what love and family and friendship really mean.

I’ve heard from several people who enjoy Lisa Jewell‘s novels. This was my first encounter with her work, but I can heartily recommend it, and would definitely want to see if her other works charm me as much as this one did. Can you recommend any? Leave me a comment if you are a Lisa Jewell fan, and let me know your favorite.

Jennifer Donovan isn’t embarrassed to be caught red-faced and teary-eyed when she’s reading. She blogs at Snapshot about her family.

Mailbox Monday, August 13

August 12, 2012 by Jennifer

Here at 5 Minutes for Books, we have a team of reviewers, so we are taking turns posting here for Mailbox Monday. I (Jennifer) was away last week, so I knew that would make for a dramatic return late Saturday night to piles of goodies. In addition to that, our trip was to Portland, Oregon home of one of my very favorite bookstores (linked to my thoughts on my personal blog Snapshot), so I knew we’d be buying some books there, and boy did we!

Knowing the reviewing commitments I already had and the stack of books that would come while I was gone, I opted to buy a T-shirt instead of books. My husband perused the sports and finance sections while I happily stayed with the kids in the children’s and YA room. We left Portland when my oldest was 2, so I had no appreciation for the children’s section. It’s fantastic!

Amanda (about to turn 14) was able to get the Mortal Instruments City of Bones books 2, 3, and 4 in the series, which she’s been unable to get at our library, because she found some good prices on some used ones.
Kyle (8) got 3 new/used Hank Zipzer books at $3.50 each (and has read 2 of them already on our trip!). He also got two Pokemon Manga Graphic Novels.

And this is what I had waiting for me, thanks to the neighbor boy who came by and collected all the things that UPS and FedEx dropped off while I was gone:

When I was asked if I wanted to read Gretchen Rubin’s new book Happier at Home, I didn’t have to think twice. I reviewed The Happiness Project over 2 years ago. I couldn’t believe it had been that long, because her humorous and down-to-earth outlook from that project has stuck with me. Can’t wait to get to this one.
Melissa D’Arabian’s Ten Dollar Dinners: 140 Recipes & Tips to Elevate Simple, Fresh Meals Any Night of the Week — This is a beautiful book, and I can’t wait to try some recipes out.
The Busy Mom’s Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, Home-Cooked Meals — I’m a Top Chef fan, and I remember contestant Antonia Lofaso from a few years ago. She’s a single working mom, and I always found her recipes accessible, and they looked delicious, so I can’t wait to look through this one. I used to have quite an addiction to cookbooks, and looking at this week, it appears to be back. Coincidentally I also have a review/giveaway over at 5 Minutes for Mom for The Mom 100 Cookbook today (live at midnight Eastern).
Geronimo Stilton Saves the Olympics is a graphic novel in the Geronimo Stilton series. The Geronimo Stilton books were among the first that my son would dive into as an independent reader, and he reads graphic novels over and over again, so I know this is going to be a bit hit.
The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell — I’ve been getting unsolicited novels from Simon & Schuster fairly frequently, but I’ve loved the ones that I’ve received lately, and I think this one will be no different. It’s a story of “three strangers brought together by the father they never knew.” I always love a good family drama! I usually feel like unsolicited mailouts are wasteful, often receiving books I’d never read, but I’ve found that receiving a book that I am excited to read but didn’t even know existed has a special thrill for me. What about you? I’d love for you to leave a comment telling me what you think of unsolicited review copies.

How about you? Have you visited a bookstore lately? Or received some ARCs that you can’t wait to read? Link up below, or feel free to share your bounty in the comments if you don’t have a blog.

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I Found You

April 24, 2017 by Nancy

When Alice sees a man sitting on the beach in the rain with no coat, against her better judgment, she invites him inside. He doesn’t know his name, where he is or how he got there, but he knows he doesn’t want to go to the police.

Newlywed Lily worries when her husband, Carl, doesn’t come home from work, and is frustrated by the police’s lack of urgency in finding him. But when they tell her the man she married doesn’t really exist, she questions everything she thought she knew about her new life.

Over 20 years earlier, Gray and his sister Kirsty are enjoying a family seaside holiday when they meet Mark, a local who takes a liking to Kirsty. But she doesn’t know how to handle his advances, and when he won’t take no for an answer, Gray and Kirsty find themselves fearing for their lives.

I Found You flips between these 3 characters, and while it’s clear they are related, how they tie together is not revealed until late in the book and there are lots of twists and turns before we get there. I figured some of these out early on but the details were slowly filled in.

The characters have their flaws – Alice is drawn to Frank but her history with men makes her afraid to trust him, even as she helps him recover his memory. Lily simpers and frets, ignoring the one bit of evidence that could lead to her husband’s whereabouts, until she finally believes the truth about who he really is. And Gray seems overly jealous of his sister’s relationship with Mark.

I Found You is the type of suspense novel I enjoy, and I couldn’t put it down until all the loose ends were tied up. You too can get drawn into this mystery in the British seaside, enter below to win a copy.

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