[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Bookouture in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Megan Holliday is shopping at the mall with her two kids. Avery is four. Brandon is three. They can both be a handful. The family has no idea the guy in the elevator with them has been waiting for them. Watching them.
Megan wakes up on her porch with a note in her lap telling her not to call the police. Her children and her van are gone.
Senator Chris Holliday is in a congressional hearing when his phone buzzes. It’s in bad taste to check it, but it’s his private cell. Megan might need him. He sees a picture of Avery and Brandon with the morning paper, asleep in their van. The message that accompanies it sends him into a panic.
Special Agent Max Carter heads up the Seattle Field Office for the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team. He interviews Megan. She can’t reach the Senator. Carter promises he’ll do all he can to find the kids. But inside he’s wondering where the Senator has disappeared to.
Review
This was a great, suspenseful thriller. The twists and turns in this were like trying to get through a complicated maze. Every time a character made progress toward finding the truth, it opened an alley to another cover up, another lie, another suspect.
I liked the multiple perspectives in this. It allowed the reader to get into the heads of several characters including the kidnappers. There are so many secrets and lies in this, it added to the suspense to read the story from different perspectives. The reader keeps having to ask, “Is this character even trustworthy?”
There’s some darkness in this – violence, a good bit of foul language, and the dark subject matter. Kidnapping, murder, cover ups. It didn’t feel excessive for the story, but sensitive readers might run into issues with some story elements/moments.
If you love suspense, thrillers, conspiracy stories and twisty mysteries, be sure to check this one out. It’s a wild ride! It looks like this is the first in a series starring Special Agent Max Carter. There are a couple threads of this left open, so future books might pick up pieces from this one, but the case is mostly resolved by the end. (Language, sexual references, violence, TW: suicide)