This one cleverly blends everything you'd expect in a kidnapped child scenario with the all the layers of deception and dysfunction in a friendship gone awry.....(a la "Big Little Lies")......
Harriet and Charlotte's friendship comes apart when Harriet's young daughter, her only child, disappears during a school outing.....while the child was in Charlotte's care along with Charlotte's own brood of three tykes.
An agonized Harriet and her angry husband wait for police to hopefully find their missing little girl.......as an equally distraught Charlotte is shunned by neighbors and vilified by social media and the press, citing her lax supervision that led to the child's disappearance......
And that's as much as you'll hear from us about the plot.
Yes, you can look forward to a mouth-opening twist.......and subsequent curveballs that drive up the suspense to near unbearable levels........(and a more than worthy villain.....pathetic, cruelly psychopathic and dangerous.....)
Heidi Perks smoothly handles all the mainstays of this now well worn genre......the shifting timelines, the alternating narrators.......but remembers to layer in genuine emotion and drama in the fractured relationship of the two women.
And she brings it all to a climax that's both realistically bittersweet, sad and yet satisfying.
Looking for a fast good read for a cold winter night? Settle in and buckle up with this one. 4 stars (****)
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