Lucinda Berry | WHEN SHE RETURNED

Plot (via Goodreads):

Kate Bennett vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago, leaving behind her husband and young daughter. When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult.

Kate's return flips her family's world upside down--her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn't look or act like she did before.

While the family tries to help Kate reintegrate into society, they discover truths they've been hiding from each other about their own relationships. But they aren't the only ones with secrets. As the family unravels what happened to Kate, a series of shocking revelations shows that Kate's return is more sinister than any of them could have imagined. 

Review:

I LOVE MISSING PERSON CASES. There, I said it. To me, as a reader and overall nosy person, there are just so many ways you can take a missing person case and turn it into a spiderweb of a story and that is exactly what Lucinda Berry did with this harrowing and psychologically creepy tale. I mean, with this one, I just loved how this woman completely vanished into thin air only to return eleven years later?! I mean, the questions I had were just building momentously within the first ten pages.

The prologue to this one is a very horror movie-esque opening that was creepy and effective. Right from the beginning, I knew I was going to be diving into something refreshing because let me tell you,  Berry's writing is just so well-detailed and atmospheric. So, when it comes to a read like this, those major talents really play into keeping your reader on edge the entire time and I was bracing myself for insanity.

What I really enjoyed about this was the layers to the story. Obviously, we all want to know what happened to Kate when she went missing and what exactly she's been up to the past eleven years, but the fact that she returns to a teenager who she barely knows and her husband with his new wife tightly grasping his arms just brought this story to a completely whole other level. The fact that this story is told from three perspectives made me just even more ecstatic to learn more. We get the perspectives of the new wife Meredith, the teenager Abbi, and then the perspective of Kate in the past so we are able to get the full effect as to what really happened. The way this story was told between these three perspectives brought elements of a psychological thriller drenched in emotion and shrouded in mystery. Everything blended together perfectly and I was heavily intrigued by the cult storyline as I don't see that much in this genre and that needs to change.

I cannot say enough great things about this one and found it to be completely immersive and I was so thankful I read it on a Saturday because work would've been really rough the next day had I stayed up all night reading this one - and I would have because putting it down would've been damn near impossible.

Special thanks to my friends at Amazon Publishing for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 5/5