UNTIL I FIND YOU

4 stars out of 5

Overall, I'd call this an edge-of-seat read; it's hard to resist the horror of going blind all by itself. Throw in a switcheroo of your infant son with a different one, and, well, yikes. 

Rebecca Gray is a recent widow, trying to care for a three-month-old baby her late husband never got to meet. If that weren't enough, she has a degenerative eye disease that's quickly moving toward total blindness. She gets around - far better than I'd have expected of anyone given the circumstances - with help from her near-photographic memory and the requisite white cane. Always, she keeps her son Jackson near, with bells tied to his tiny legs to alert her to his presence. She's also plagued with the feeling that she's being watched or followed and that someone may have been in her house.

Bec, a former professional cellist, has a few close friends with whom she socializes; one of them has a 10-year-old daughter, a musical prodigy Bec has taken on as a student. One day, Bec nearly collapses - and agrees to one of her friends' suggestions that she take sleeping pills and get some rest while the friend hangs around in case the baby wakes up. Bec gets a much-needed rest, all right, but the walls come crashing down when she goes to the crib to get Jackson and finds a baby there that isn't him.

She panics, understandably, and becomes even more agitated when her friends - even the one who stayed with her and Jackson - that the baby is the same one she's always had. Immediately, she concludes no one else will believe her - especially not the police - so instead of seeking professional help, she turns to the ex-boyfriend she loved with all her heart but who left her to take a job in another part of the country. He's found a new job here now, it seems, and they recently reconnected. Jake's actually a homicide detective, but he frustrates Bec because he emphasizes that while he'll do what he can to help, he has to follow established department rules.

With barely a little help from her friends, then, Bec pretty much sets out to investigate on her own - along the way bumping into walls both real and imagined. Finally, there's a breakthrough - and Bec realizes the truth doesn't live far from home.

Admittedly, I wasn't able to sympathize with Bec as much as I would have expected given her predicament. But fairly early on, she lost me when she refused to even consult the experts - rationalizing that they "won't believe me." Trust me, if somebody gave me the wrong baby, you'd have to pry me out of every police station and social worker's office in the state with a crowbar. When I got to the end, I also realized that Bec's concerns about being followed and the home invasions hadn't been addressed. So were her suspicions accurate or merely figments of an overactive imagination?

Still, the book was hard to put down, especially as Bec gets closer to finding her baby (or at least finding out what happened to him). All told, it's an engaging, fast-paced tale. Thanks to the publisher, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read and review a pre-release copy.

Until I Find You by Rea Frey (St. Martin's Griffin, August 2020); 320 pp.

NOT HER DAUGHTER

4 stars out of 5


Somewhere I read that this book is to be made into a movie - and it's easy to see that it could be a good one. It's a cleverly written story that's intriguing enough to make me not want to stop reading as well as raise more than a few ethical issues that really did make me stop and think where I stood pre- and post-read. I've never been a big fan of chapters that switch back and forth among characters, and this one does that as well as shift to before, during and after the main event, the kidnapping of five-year-old Emma Townsend by successful business owner Sarah Walker. Happily in this case, though, it's hard to imagine that the story could be told any better without using that technique. How that can be accomplished in a motion picture, however, remains to be seen.

In the airport on a business trip, Sarah sees Emma and watches with near horror as the girl's out-of-control mother is verbally and physically abusive to the child. Sarah desperately wants to intervene, but in the end everyone goes in separate directions, presumably never to see the others again. But as luck would have it, another chance encounter at Emma's Montesorri school (where Sarah is trying to sell her popular digital educational activity books) puts Emma back on Sarah's radar, where she discovers more child abuse. Not long after that, Sarah gets a chance to snatch the girl from her parents and baby brother - and takes it.

From that point on, readers watch Sarah's efforts to stay hidden from the authorities while she makes sure Emma is lavished with attention and fights to believe that she's acting in the child's best interests and, therefore, has done nothing wrong. Readers also begin to see how Emma's family ended up the way they are - especially Amy, Emma's abusive mother. Sarah doesn't get short shrift either; we see how her own background has played into her insecurities and abhorrence of the treatment Emma was getting at the hands of her mother.

As I mentioned earlier, the story raises important ethical issues. Does Sarah's intent to remove Emma from danger, for instance, justify the kidnapping? Amy's disastrous childhood may explain her treatment of her daughter, but does it justify the behavior enough that her daughter should be returned to her? If anybody cares about my opinion, it's no and no - but you'll just have to read the book and judge for yourself. The story is totally engrossing, although in my mind not totally believable. In this day and age, I can't imagine that the loose ends Sarah leaves everywhere they go wouldn't lead police right to her doorstep in less than a week - the most obvious being no attempt to change either of their names despite a nationwide media blitz. And, Sarah supposedly has plenty of money - but how is she able to access it on the run without leaving any kind of electronic trail?

Oh well, I'll never know. I do know, though, that this is an outstanding book - and I'm super-delighted that the publisher, via NetGalley, saw fit to offer me an advance copy for review.

Not Her Daughter by Rhea Frey (St. Martin's Griffin, August 2018); 352 pp.)