When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life - and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face.
The police, Beatrice's fiance and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost.
Comment: I saw this book at the library and decided to bring it with me because I had heard some talk about it some time ago, and I remember some friends from this reading world to have read it and discussed it but I never paid attention because I hadn't read it myself.
Now, I thought I had the opportunity to see what it was all about.
In this story we meet Beatrice, a woman who travels from New York to her native England after she is told her younger sister Tess is missing.
At first, Beatrice is eager to look for her sister herself, despite the efforts the police claims is doing and she quickly starts to add the dots in the several little clues left. However, the more steps she takes into discovering what happened, the more details about Tess she finds out too and she can't help feeling a little surprised by how much she didn't know about her sister's life.
When a shocking discovery makes everyone else think the case is about to be closed, Beatrice just won't stop until she knows what happened to Tess, but will she be able to deal with what she discovers?
This book is labeled as thriller but I think what was more captivating to me was not as much the investigation of Tess' disappearance but the bond between sisters.
Beatrice is the embodiment of how we all wish our siblings should be: caring, concerned, eager to help even if things hadn't been very easy lately or if distance had made the communication more sporadic and never giving up on knowing how we could be fairly helped.
I liked this aspect of the novel, even when the emotional parts felt rather raw.
Beatrice is a very intriguing character. She is extremely clever and complex and every little detail we gt to know about her doesn't seem very important in the big scheme of things but I felt some empathy to how she acted, to her personality traits and I wonder if, apart from some things, I wouldn't behave just like her.
This is helped by the fact the story is told in 1st person and we get to read between the lines in regards to her thoughts and behavior and understand why she is the way she is (not a quitter despite her own complexes and insecurities).
I keep saying in romances 1st person is difficult to get right but in the thriller/suspense genre it can have very good results.
I won't go too much into the plot because some things only make sense if one shares spoilers but let me say some development was quite surprising. I'd never think of connecting the dots the way Beatrice does but, again, I suppose it depends on how much emotional investment someone has on a situation... were I in her shoes, wouldn't I try all possibilities?
Some sequences, however, felt a little too easy to get without them being that obvious.
In the end, when we have the explanation for the whole plot, I think some of those sequences felt they were forced, like the connection had to be developed that way otherwise the end wouldn't be that one, which means things weren't as naturally looking as I'd think had the story gone a different direction.
The end gives us hope. Well, I choose to see it like that even though the author herself said it can be the reader's choice to see the last scene as positive or negative.
Still, there was detail, related very closely to how the final twist explains the plot, that left me a little bit disappointed. We are led to believe a certain situation could be possible and it turns out that it actually isn't. It's a secondary detail, not pertaining the overall story line but well, my romance reader side feels it was unfair the author did that. Quite difficult to accept things aren't always what they are supposed to be...
I won't jump into reading the other books by the author but the lyrical passages, the idea of this novel, the dedication of a sister for the other and the style were captivating enough to make me pick another book by mrs Lupton if one day one of them gets on my way.
Grade: 7/10
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