The book is advertised as a gripping psychological thriller. While the mystery of the whodunnit was compelling, I wouldn't say that the story was gripping in any sense of the word. I felt more affinity with the potential perps than I did with our main character Tess or any of her family members. Tess was a little dull and her accusations against this person and that person based on nothing realistic was annoying. She was an excitable character that I did not like. What kept me reading? I really wanted to know who killed Phoebe.

Most of the twists and turns came near the end of the story and I felt that they were almost on top of each other. I had to concentrate hard on catching them as they came quickly. Also, some of the twists seemed far-fetched but maybe that is just a result of them coming all at the same time. It would have been better to have them equally placed throughout the plot.

The whodunnit drives this story although the whydunnit was surprising. For this reason I am rating the book at 3 out of 5 stars. ( )

It was slow... really slow ( )

I really enjoyed this story. From reading other reviews, it seems like other people figured out "who dun it" way before I did, but that is ok. I like being surprised and I don't try TOO hard to figure things out early. The only negative aspect was the fact I "read" this as an audiobook and 3 of the discs were scratched up, two of which were the last two CDs, which is where a good part of the action happened and where all was revealed. I think I am going to start making more of an effort to avoid audio CDs and go for the digital audio books that I can listen to through my phone or tablet and the aux jack in my car.

That said, the story starts out with Tess and her sister, Phoebe, camping with their family. Tess witnesses her sister's abduction, and then the story fast-forwards to the future and Tess, as an adult, is going back to where her sister's abduction and murder happened to hear the results of some new DNA evidence that ends up revealing that the guy Tess accused of the abduction and murder was innocent.

The lawyer that represents the falsely accused family ends up falling for Tess, and then strange things start happening. Someone is killed, her adopted son is abducted, she goes in search for him and then all is revealed. The story twists and turns, which is fun, but at times it got tiring because every time she had the slightest inkling of who MIGHT have done it, she acted as if she KNEW that is who did it and proceeded as though she had all the facts and there could be no doubt. Of course, she was wrong, a few times. A wild goose chase or red herring ONCE in a story, is plenty.


( )

The characters were too predictable. This wore down the story and made it a chore to read.
The only bright light was the ending: would never have guessed who the bad guy was.
Not exactly a blech read, but ho hum, definitely. ( )

Great story that moves right along in the audio version. I was a teensy bit frustrated near the end with some stupidity on the part of one of the characters but we can blame that on the author wanting to make the story even more exciting. Fair enough. ( )