Book Review | Dear Child

A change of reading pace for me to kick off the week and a book I was quite looking forward to.

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A windowless shack in the woods. Lena’s life and that of her two children follows the rules set by their captor, the father: Meals, bathroom visits, study time are strictly scheduled and meticulously observed. He protects his family from the dangers lurking in the outside world and makes sure that his children will always have a mother to look after them.

One day Lena manages to flee – but the nightmare continues. It seems as if her tormentor wants to get back what belongs to him. And then there is the question whether she really is the woman called ‘Lena’, who disappeared without a trace 14 years ago. The police and Lena’s family are all desperately trying to piece together a puzzle which doesn’t quite seem to fit.

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I needed a bit of a change of pace after my last read and a thriller seemed like the perfect choice, especially one that sounded as good in the blurb as this one did.

This was a book that I managed to completely lose myself in, the kind of thriller that is so absorbing that I read it in just a couple of sittings. There is something that always strangely attracts me to this type of story, I find it interesting the psychology of the motives behind the abductor and Dear Child hit all the right notes for me.

The story is told through three narrators and we get glimpses of Lena and Hannah’s time in the cabin and the aftermath of their escape. I had so many questions from the start and those only increased as the story unfolded, this definitely amped up the tension throughout the story. I’m not going to delve into the storyline too much because it’s one that you will want to discover for yourself but it did have me puzzling over its many pieces and every time I discovered something new it added to the suspense of the overall story and my need to discover who was behind Lena’s disappearance.

The characters were all very complex and interesting and I was questioning them at every turn. I admired that the aftermath of the escape was handled so well and you could feel the confusion, fear and mistrust of the outside world that the characters felt and again this added extra layers to the story but also to the suspense. The only character I wasn’t so keen on was Lena’s father Matthias, there was something that just didn’t sit right with me about him but actually, at the conclusion of the story I was impressed by his character arc.

There was a lot about this book that I wasn’t expecting and it made for a very intense reading experience, but thankfully every question that ran through my head was answered by the end and I was left in awe of Lena’s fighting spirit. I think this is a book that is sure to impress and there are a lot of people that will be just as captivated as I was with it, I’d be excited to see what this author comes up with next.

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