"A white envelope, unmarked, no stamp. Scrawled in chicken scratch: I KNOW WHERE SHE IS."
Francine receives this message ten years after her daughter, Autumn Cooper-Wright, went missing and no amount of searching ever turned up a clue. Francine descended into an alcoholic haze, she and her husband, Will, divorced and only recently has she begun to get herself put back together. Francine frantically calls her husband for a meet, but he's moved on, has a new wife and is expecting a child, and he thinks it's just a prank. When Francine meets 18-year-old Lena out by her car next to her job place the next day, she's not convinced that Lena is anything but a cruel joke when Lena says she knows Autumn -- whom she knows as Melody. And, Lena says that Autumn is still alive. Lena only begins to believe it when Lena tells her things that make her blood run cold.
"Even if you got her back...She's not the same little girl you lost...None of us are."
As messed up and unstable as Francine appears at first, she pulls herself together quickly and is off on a mission to rescue her daughter from unspeakable circumstances. NO SPOILERS, but the situation Autumn is in is horrible and one that no parent wants to imagine. The book really takes off after this and ratchets toward a spectacular, if somewhat unbelievable, climax. The narrative is well-paced and tension builds as Francine seeks to find and regain her daughter. Francine changes into something approaching Super Woman before the reader's eyes and the transformation is necessary considering what she is up against. Can she rescue Autumn when there is no one to turn to for help?
This was quite the unexpected thrill read for me as I had not anticipated the direction it was going. I enjoyed it as the pages flew by. As others have said, set aside a block of time as this begs to be read in a single sitting.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canelo Publishing for the e-book ARC to read and review.
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