About the Book:
An engrossing and suspenseful novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Amy Hatvany about an affluent suburban family whose carefully constructed facade starts to come apart with the unexpected arrival of an endangered young girl.
I have something for you. When Quinn Cruz receives that cryptic text message from her older sister Nora, she doesn’t think much of it. They haven’t seen each other in nearly a year and thanks to Nora’s fierce aloofness, their relationship consists mostly of infrequent phone calls and an occasional email or text. But when a haunted Nora shows up at the lake near Quinn's house just hours later, a chain reaction is set into motion that will change both of their lives forever.
Nora’s “something” is more shocking than Quinn could have ever imagined: a little girl, cowering, wide-eyed, and tight-lipped. Nora hands her over to Quinn with instructions to keep her safe, and not to utter a word about the child to anyone, especially not their buttoned-up mother who seems determined to pretend everything is perfect. But before Quinn can ask even one of the million questions swirling around her head, Nora disappears, and Quinn finds herself the unlikely caretaker of a girl introduced simply as Lucy.
While Quinn struggles to honor her sister’s desperate request and care for the lost, scared Lucy, she fears that Nora may have gotten involved in something way over her head—something that will threaten them all. But Quinn’s worries are nothing compared to the firestorm that Nora is facing. It’s a matter of life and death, of family and freedom, and ultimately, about the lengths a woman will go to protect the ones she loves.
My Comments:
I love Nicole Baart's writing. I love her word choice, the pictures she paints with her writing, the way her writing sounds when read aloud. Reading what she writes is an absolute joy, and she is one of only a few authors who get that type of accolade from me. Most of the time, the words are a medium, a way to get the story across--nothing more or less. I don't notice them unless the writing is, in my opinion, extraordinarily good like Baart's or extraordinarily bad (like many of the free/cheap ebooks on Amazon).
Unfortunately, as has been the case with some of her other books, I don't like the ending of this story. It just didn't seem realistic. Too many things had to happen just the way they did for everyone to get the happily ever after that they got.
One of the characters is a woman in her 50's, and while perhaps our social classes are different, and that accounts for the different lifestyle, I found the things she did and the life she led to be more typical of women in my mother's generation than of women in mine (I'm in my mid-50's).
I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley. Grade: B.
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