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Book Review: The Stolen Sisters by Louise Jensen
Summary:
Leah’s perfect marriage isn’t what it seems but the biggest lie of all is that she’s learned to live with what happened all those years ago. Marie drinks a bit too much to help her forget. And Carly has never forgiven herself for not keeping them safe.
Twenty years ago The Sinclair Sisters were taken. But what came after their return was far worse. Can a family ever recover, especially when not everyone is telling the truth…?
Review:
I really enjoyed this twist on the abducted children thriller trope. Instead of being told linearly from the moment of abduction forward, we meet the children as adults. We know they survived, but we also see what emotional and mental health impact being abducted had on them. Chapters alternate among characters and also among timelines . We see both the past and the present, and how they converge together at the 20th anniversary of their abduction.
In a way it may seem this twist removes all suspense – we know the sisters survived the abduction and were returned. But in fact it was still quite a suspenseful read. There’s still a lot of mystery. For example, we at first don’t know who did the abduction or why. We don’t know exactly what happened to the sisters when they were abducted and why that might have led to their current behaviors. And we also don’t know if Leah especially is correct to be anxious about something nefarious happening on the 20th anniversary or if it’s her PTSD and OCD tricking her.
I like how this book goes about exploring that what makes something traumatic isn’t necessarily the exact degree of physical trauma experienced but rather each individual’s own perception of the situation. Trauma is very personal, and what traumatizes some and not others is also personal. We see this very clearly in the sisters who had varying degrees of physical harm during the abduction, and yet their long-term trauma responses differed but not in direct proportion to the traumas they experienced. This is a very trauma-informed read.
The book also explores family and sisters. What makes us call someone a sister, and what makes us call someone family? Who gets to truly be our family and who doesn’t. What impact do those relationships have on us.
In general Leah’s OCD is well represented, although her magical number is a little low at 3. I understand why Leah’s number is 3 but a higher number is more common and obviously a higher magical number is more invasive in day to day life. Leah, for example, feels a compulsion to clean the floor 3 times. Cleaning the floor 10 times for a magical number of 10 is obviously more invasive in daily life. I also personally feel that she puts too much blame on herself for her OCD, and those around her let her. I’m fine with this happening but I’d like for it to be corrected by the end of the book. Instead she continues to blame herself for causing those around her to suffer from her OCD rather than understanding it’s not her fault.
Marie’s addiction is not explored as thoroughly as I would have liked but that’s my own personal preference. What is there is well-done. Carly’s feelings as the oldest who took on a lot of responsibility even at the age of 13 I found well-done.
Overall this is a creative exploration of the abducted children thriller trope that turns it on its head, following them as adults with flashbacks to childhood that still maintains suspense throughout. Recommended to those seeking a thriller more focused on the psychological than physical risks.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 400 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
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Book Review: Safe In My Arms by Sara Shepard
Summary:
Three women whose children attend an elite preschool in coastal California find their lives intertwined when they all receive threatening notes in their children’s backpacks.
Review:
Sara Shepard is most famous for writing Pretty Little Liars, the series the hit tv show is based upon. In Pretty Little Liars the threat is text messages. Here it’s old school notes. Only this time, it’s the moms twisted into secrets and lies.
The three moms are at the center of the book, and I only actually liked one. Andrea is a trans woman who moved to California to be able to transition and live openly, away from her elite and judgmental family. Now, I will note I am a cis woman, and I would like to hear what a trans woman thinks of the representation, but I thought Andrea was written very well. I appreciated the realism of having to deal with some transphobia in her family but also being warmly welcomed by the other two women – both as a friend and as a woman. The author’s note at the end makes it clear she sought out a sensitivity reader for Andrea, and I could tell. If only the same efforts had been made for the other two women….
Lauren is struggling with postpartum rage (a symptom tied to postpartum depression). I just felt she was quite two-dimensional, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about her.
Ronnie is a topless maid, formerly a stripper, who moved here from Pennsylvania with her daughter. It at first appears she did so to get away from an abusive man. I can’t talk about Ronnie without revealing a slight spoiler (it’s revealed about 1/3 of the way into the book), so be warned.
Ronnie’s “daughter” is actually her niece. Her sister was in a relationship with an abusive man and was addicted to something. It’s vaguely explained as drugs. Ronnie, after a violent fight with her sister’s significant other that ends with her discovering her sister wounded on the floor, takes the baby and runs with her. She never follows up to see if her sister is ok. No, no, she just steals her daughter, changes her daughter’s name, and decides her daughter is better off with her anyway. I just simply could not empathize with the child abductor here. Ronnie had other options to help her niece. She had never even tried anything else (beyond living with her sister to “protect” her). I’m ok with a book featuring a less than ideal character. I’m not ok with the whole tone of the book being that I should empathize with her or that what she did was a mistake.
Because that’s the thing. The book kind of wraps up with the message that all moms make mistakes and it’s ok to not be perfect. I mean, sure, within reason. But there’s it’s ok to not be perfect and then there’s you’re only in the mom club because you stole someone else’s child.
Also as someone who cares about addiction and recovery, I found the depiction of Ronnie’s sister Vanessa to be heartless. She isn’t given the same chance and possibility to recover and change and learn from her mistakes as the other mom’s. In fact, the whole “moms don’t have to be perfect” scene features the moms describing all the reasons their children make them drink alcohol. The hypocrisy of this scene sickened me.
Contemporary books are approaching the pandemic in a variety of ways. This one chose to set the story “post-pandemic.” I’m fine with that optimistic choice, and I understand why it was made. But the strange thing is it mostly seems to acknowledge the impacts of the pandemic as purely economic – there’s a lot of talk about economic challenges from when we all stayed home but almost zero mention of anything else. I think there was one mention of face masks? This is set in California. There was way more impact than just economic. It rubbed me the wrong way how it made it out to be all about economic issues, and also how things just immediately snapped back to normal. If one wants a normal contemporary book, fine, just don’t acknowledge the pandemic at all then. Include an author’s note that this is for escapism and move on. Don’t acknowledge it as an economic downturn like 2008 and nothing much else…..
Beyond this, the actual main issue going on at the school was interesting and twisty. I had my suspicions early on, but I still enjoyed the twists. What really saved the book for me, though, was Andrea. We need more positive trans rep in psychological thrillers, and Andrea was very well-done.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 304 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
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Book Review: The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer
Summary:
Carmel Wakeford becomes separated from her mother at a local children’s festival, and is found by a man who claims to be her estranged grandfather. He tells her that her mother has had an accident and that she is to live with him for now. As days become weeks with her new family, 8-year-old Carmel realises that this man believes she has a special gift…
While her mother desperately tries to find her, Carmel embarks on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is – and who she might become.
Review:
I picked this book up after seeing the title for kind of a ridiculous reason. I’m a big fan of the tv show Pretty Little Liars, and at the time I was in the season where the Big Bad is known as “Red Coat.” I was so stoked to see another mystery surrounding a woman/girl in a red coat that I just had to investigate it. Of course I discovered that it was also a missing/abducted child mystery/thriller (one of my favorite mystery/thriller subgenres), so it quickly ran up my tbr list.
This book tells the missing/abducted child story from both the grieving parent’s and the child’s point of view simultaneously. This is interesting because we can see how they are both changing as time passes, and the mystery becomes not “what is happening to so-and-so” but more “will these two ever find each other again and will they be able to salvage their relationship if they do?”
The mother’s storyline deals with parenting, guilt, and complicated grief. It acknowledges her faults without demonizing her for them. I truly found reading about her struggle to accept and move on without losing hope to be heart-wrenching.
The daughter’s storyline deals with a small girl feeling angry at her mother, grief at her supposed injury and death, and then dealing with having everyone around her believe she has the power to heal through laying on hands. Laying on hands in Evangelical Protestantism is the belief that God can work miracles through you if you lay your hands on a sick person and pray for them. What’s interesting here is that the book takes the position that Carmel does have some sort of mystical healing power, it’s just that it’s not directly related to Jesus and shouldn’t be used to get money from people, the way the man who abducted Carmel uses her to get money out of people. It’s an interesting position to take — that some people can just heal others. I’d say this might be the first magical realism book that worked for me. Because I was really ok with Carmel having this ability just randomly in our world. I also thought that the book manages to not demonize religion. It’s not that religion is bad per se it’s that bad people can twist it to harm others (ain’t that the truth though).
What I found most interesting was the underlying question throughout the book. Carmel and her mother were just not getting along before she was abducted. They didn’t get each other. Is that something they would have been able to get past? Is it something they could get past now if they find each other again?
I think the book answers the most straight-forward questions but it stopped too soon to answer my questions about particular relationships. I think the book either needs a sequel or needed to continue along longer. The point isn’t will this child return physically but rather is this a relationship that could ever be healed.
Recommended to those looking for a child abduction story told from both the parent and the child’s point of view.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 384 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
Book Review: A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
Summary:
On June 10, 1991, eleven year old Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted from her school bus stop by Phillip and Nancy Garrido with the aid of a stun-gun. Jaycee was locked up in a backyard compound and repeatedly raped and abused by Phillip in a bid to satisfy his pedophilia. Over the course of her 18 year captivity, Jaycee gave birth to two daughters in the compound. Eventually with her increasing age, the sexual assaults stopped, but she was still held captive. Finally, on August 26, 2009, Phillip brought Jaycee and her daughters with him to the parole office in an attempt to explain away why he was spotted in public with the two girls. Jaycee, who hadn’t been allowed to speak her name for 18 years, was able to write it down for the police. This is the memoir of her experience and gradual recovery from the captivity.
Review:
Jaycee wrote this memoir without the assistance of a ghost writer, something very uncommon in memoirs by victims of abduction. She states in the beginning that her way of remembering things is a bit off because of the trauma, but that her way of telling her story will provide a genuine experience for the reader to truly see how the abduction affected her. She is correct that the memoir is not set up in a traditional way, but this tends to make for stronger books when discussing something as painful as this. It reminds me a bit of the very non-traditional story-telling methods used in another memoir When Rabbit Howls. Eliminating the ghost writer and letting the victim speak grants us, the readers, the opportunity to truly connect with a survivor. I humbly thank Jaycee for her bravery in this.
Most of the chapters start with Jaycee remembering the events from the perspective of her younger self. This absolutely makes scenes such as her first molestation by Phillip incredibly haunting. She then ends each chapter with a reflection from her adult, free perspective on the past. This structure is unique, but it provides an interesting perspective, showing both Jaycee the victim and Jaycee the survivor. Toward the end of the book this structure is lost a bit as we suddenly are shown many pages from the journal Jaycee carefully kept in captivity, as well as talking in a more present manner about the therapy she’s been going through. Her therapist sounds truly remarkable. She uses horses to help the survivors deal with problems, which seems to work incredibly well for Jaycee who often only had animals around to talk to during her 18 year ordeal.
Although Jaycee does recount her abuse and manipulation at the hands of Phillip, that is not at all what stands out in this memoir. What comes across is what a strong, sensitive, caring woman Jaycee is. She is not lost in woe is me. She does not even think she has it the worst of anyone in the world. The one thing she repeatedly states she’s learned is that she was not assertive enough as a little girl, and that personality trait backfired on her repeatedly throughout the ordeal. She states that she sees this as the reason abuse of all kinds are able to go on, because people don’t speak up.
There are moments in which all of us need to have a backbone and feel that we have the right to say no to adults if we believe they are doing the wrong thing. You must find your voice and not be afraid to speak up. (page 143)
This message of “speak up” is stated repeatedly throughout the book and leaves the reader feeling empowered rather than downtrodden at such a tale. If Jaycee could live through such a situation and come out of it stronger and as an advocate for victims and survivors of abuse to speak up, how can any of us do any less?
I recommend this book to those who enjoy memoirs and survival stories and can handle scenes of a disturbing nature.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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