Berkley Books
July 11, 2017
464 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depository/or Amazon
In the breathtaking new thriller from David Bell, bestselling author of Since She Went Away and Somebody I Used to Know, the fate of two missing teenage girls becomes a father's worst nightmare....
Just a year and a half after the tragic death of his wife, Bill Price's fifteen-year-old daughter, Summer, and her best friend, Haley, disappear. Days later, the girls are found in a city park. Haley is dead at the scene, while Summer is left beaten beyond recognition and clinging to life.
As Bill holds vigil over Summer's bandaged body, the only sound the unconscious girl can make is one cryptic and chilling word: No. And the more time Bill spends with Summer, the more he wonders what happened to her. Or if the injured girl in the hospital bed is really his daughter at all.
When troubling new questions about Summer's life surface, Bill is not prepared for the aftershocks. He'll soon discover that both the living and the dead have secrets. And that searching for the truth will tear open old wounds that pierce straight to the heart of his family...
READERS GUIDE INCLUDED
Bill Price is a recent widower whose teenage daughter Summer, along with her best friend Haley, has been missing for a few days. Now, an early morning phone call tells him to get to the hospital: they've found the girls.
I thought the author did a great job in the very beginning with Bill's portrayal. He seemed to be a great mix of upset, angry and confused, but glad his daughter was alive. He was sort of awkward in what he said or expected, but it worked. As things continued, did have problems with Bill. He is a very angry person, which I suppose could be largely attributed to his grief (but not entirely as we're shown in some scenes from prior to his wife's death). He also seems to decide things (like what happened to Summer or who did it or why) without much or any basis or evidence. His fervent belief in these things, his overzealous actions and proclamations were just too dramatic.
I think that if there had been more focus on some of the other characters, or they had been more fully developed, I could have liked it more. There were just too many problems with Bill's character, the central one, for it to work for me.
There were small details, that while not really harming the story were distracting for being illogical or not following what had already happened. (Two non-spoilery ones: Bill notices Summer, while in the ICU, is not wearing her bracelet and wonders if whoever took her stole it. Only there's no way the hospital would have left that on her. There was no autopsy when his wife died because it was clearly an accident - except a healthy, young woman dying, alone from an accident seems like it would still require one.)
The language of Bring Her Home could get repetitive (phrases, specific words, even a story from Bill and Paige's childhood) and the twists were almost entirely predictable (the first may have been because I previously read a book, based on something true, where the same thing happened), but something did keep me reading this book. As much as Bill and his actions did not work for me, I did really wan to find out how it all ended. Bring Her Home was definitely dramatic but also very intense and that intensity keeps you pulled in, wanting to know the final whodunit (and why). Give Bring Her Home a try, Bill's character might work well for you.
NB: I checked points of issue against a finished copy and only factored those not changed into my review (some absolutely were removed/fixed).
digital review copy received from publisher, via NetGalley
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