I laid in bed and finished this book so I didn’t have to watch the election results

I started this book last week, and I liked it immediately. Unfortunately, it was my bedtime book, so I frequently fell asleep, or nearly fell asleep while reading it, so I didn’t get very far. It’s one of those books that grabs hold of you though! I just read it for over an hour and a half tonight so that I didn’t have to watch the election results coming in. It actually took my mind off the anxiety for a while.

Anyway, the story is about a 13 year old girl who gets kidnapped. There is of course family fall out, but everyone (who wasn’t kidnapped) survives. After about eight years, a young woman returns “home” claiming that she is Julie (the kidnapped girl). Her sister and father immediately believe it’s her, and her mother wants to believe it too. There are red flags and shady behavior, and scrambled identities.

There’s a pedophilia plot (with skin crawling details about how the sex offender groomed the girl), prostitution, homelessness, and singing. Like I said, it was hard to put down.

I guess this story can be boiled down to family relationships, self worth, and home. I won’t ruin the central mystery – is Julie really Julie? It’s part of the intrigue to go with the flow and find out as the family does.

I know that every book that I read involving teenage girls reminds me of how vigilant I have to be when my nieces are old enough to start hiding things from us! It’s a scary thought, but it makes me want to be there for them even more.