She’s Not There
By: Joy Fielding
Rating: 5 of 5
“She’s Not There” tells the story of Caroline Shipley. She is the mother of two who is convinced (by her husband) to leaver her two young daughters alone in their hotel room in order to celebrate their anniversary dinner with family in friends. The worst happens and their youngest daughter goes missing.
Fifteen years later, Caroline is still heart-broken and the “anniversary” of the kidnapping is coming up. She gets a call from a young woman who announces that she believes she is Caroline’s missing daughter.
From there the book takes off. It alternates between past events and how it came out that the children were left alone and the present where Caroline tries to find out if the young woman is really Samantha.
The characters are so true to life and one in particular reminded me of a female relative of mine. That is Caroline’s ex-husband’s mother, Mary. It turns out that the character was modeled on one of the author’s relatives, who, according to her words “as miserable a woman as ever walked this earth.” It seems to be a true to type character because I can say the same about my relative.
Caroline’s torment over her guilt and also her feelings about her remaining daughter really spoke to me. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child in a split second without ever knowing what happened but I can relate to the loss of a child. That others have moved on and yet Caroline, as a mother is unable to do so. That is reality in life from my experience and made the book one that I could not put down.
Joy Fielding has many books to her credit, however, I believe that this is the first I have read by her. I am always happy to find new (to me) authors with a large back list of books. I know that I will have hours of great reading time with this author. I certainly plan to look forward to her future novels as well.
I received a complimentary copy of this book via the publisher.
