Book name: “Don’t Look for me”

Author’s name: Wendy Walker

Publishing company: St. Martin’s Press

Stars: 5/5

Summary: If I could give more than five stars I would do: this is the best work of the author and so far it’s at my top ten best thrillers list of 2020!

Let’s clap till our hands get numb and make some noise till our throats hurt!

Ladies and gentleman I announce a big winner and I know I enjoyed so many thrillers this year and gave them five stars but this books deserves 5,5 stars because it is really unique, original and better than most of the books. It’s emotional, heart wrecking, thought provoking grief story but it is also action packed, mind bending, exciting, nail-biter, body trembler , heart pounder, soul shaker and crusher kidnapping story. It is genuinely disturbing family drama but it is also WTH I just read kind of obsession, abuse, child neglect story. And the author is a magician to combine different genres, mixing them and serving an outstanding, unputdownable, terrifying novel with her talented story-telling skills.

This is my new fast reading record! Even though I’m not thankful to turn into stay-at-home writer and reader at these social distancing, #homequarantinechallenge days, only silver lining I get, I may fully concentrate on a well-written books and I’m able to forget what kind of madness is going on at the outer world. (I can see myself at a movie scene during the apocalypse, I’m hiding under a table and screaming “Please, leave me alone, I have only 10 pages left to finish!”)

I stop blubbering right now. Let’s move on and talk about the plot: The story narrated by two women: Grieving mother and daughter: Molly and Nicole.

Molly lost her daughter. Nicole lost her sister. Molly suffers from guilt feelings, self-punishing herself for 5 years because her 9 years old daughter Annie dashed down from the house and ran to the main road, escaping from her baby sitter sister Nicole who is talking on the phone and the very same time Molly’s car approached the house and she hit… Yes, you may fill the blanks as well. This part of the story torn my heart apart.

That haunted day Molly hasn’t only lost her daughter, she has also lost her whole family. Now her husband is estranged, he may have an affair. Her daughter tells that she hates her and when she goes to her son’s school to watch his match and support him, he acts like he doesn’t see her but he also shows his irritation. Last nail in the coffin! Everybody hates her. She blames herself. Maybe her family will be better without her. So she drives her car in the middle of nowhere, runs out of gas, leaves her car, begins to walk. And a truck stops to help her. AND THEN?

Her car is found by the local authorities. A search team is assigned but she is nowhere to be found. She seems like vaporized into thin air. They keep searching till they found a letter is written by Molly and left at the hotel tells: “Don’t look for me!” The hotel room is charged by her credit card and the signature under the letter belongs to her. So the case is closed and Molly’s husband seems relieved as her children deals with their guilt feelings because of their unfair treatment to their mom.

Nicole is already numb in pain, turned into an alcoholic, dropped out of high school since she lost her sister and now her mother is gone. She blames herself, gets suspicious about her father’s motives because he stops searching and forces her to move her life till she gets a phone call giving her crucial tips about her mother’s disappearance.

She goes back to Hastings Pass, renting a hotel room and digging more because she promised her brother to find her whatever it takes. But did she put herself danger by resuming her search? Because when we read Molly’s part of the story: we find out she is kidnapped by the truck driver and his 9 years old, creepy daughter Alice (the same age her daughter Annie died), home prisoned and losing her hope at each day because her escaping attempts to the woods didn’t take her to anywhere and Alice tells her that her mother died in those woods.

So time is ticking! The daughter searches her mother, the kidnapper hunts for daughter and the mother tries to find a way to save them all. How will their story end?

I already spilled more beans so I have to shut my mouth right now. Go blind and read this book! And enjoy the mind numbing, WTH I just read ending!

So much special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sharing this incredible ARC with me. And dear Wendy Walker, please keep on writing your smart, thrilling and thought-provoking stories. T