20181201_144215.jpgHappy Wednesday!  Today I have a review of a new thriller from Christian White, The Nowhere Child, publishing via Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s Press on January 22, 2019!

My Thoughts:

Kimberly is a photography teacher living in Australia when she is contacted by an American who believes that over twenty years ago, Kimberly was a toddler who was kidnapped from Kentucky. 

Kimberly cannot fathom that her mother who passed away a few years ago could be responsible for kidnapping her. 

Jack and Molly Went are the parents to a toddler, and two other children when their youngest is taken from their home. They were already having marriage difficulties and when their toddler, Sammy, disappears, they grow further apart. 

Eventually, Kim is given proof that she and Sammy are the same person, she travels to Kentucky to visit the family she has never known. She also wants to find out how she was abducted. 

The Pentecostal church provides support to Molly as she grieves the loss of Sammy, and it also may be at the center of mystery of what happened to her. 

The Nowhere Child is exciting, original, and hooked me right from the start. There are twists and turns, and I loved the vivid sense of both settings- Australia and Kentucky. The cult aspects enthralled me with their super creepiness. Well-done, fresh, and engaging, just how I like my suspense stories. 

Thanks to Minotaur Books/St. Martin’s Press for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own. 

Synopsis:

Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, The Nowhere Child is screenwriter Christian White’s internationally bestselling debut thriller of psychological suspense about a woman uncovering devastating secrets about her family—and her very identity…

Kimberly Leamy is a photography teacher in Melbourne, Australia. Twenty-six years earlier, Sammy Went, a two-year old girl vanished from her home in Manson, Kentucky. An American accountant who contacts Kim is convinced she was that child, kidnapped just after her birthday. She cannot believe the woman who raised her, a loving social worker who died of cancer four years ago, crossed international lines to steal a toddler.

On April 3rd, 1990, Jack and Molly Went’s daughter Sammy disappeared from the inside their Kentucky home. Already estranged since the girl’s birth, the couple drifted further apart as time passed. Jack did his best to raise and protect his other daughter and son while Molly found solace in her faith. The Church of the Light Within, a Pentecostal fundamentalist group who handle poisonous snakes as part of their worship, provided that faith. Without Sammy, the Wents eventually fell apart.

Now, with proof that she and Sammy are in fact the same person, Kim travels to America to reunite with a family she never knew she had. And to solve the mystery of her abduction—a mystery that will take her deep into the dark heart of religious fanaticism where she must fight for her life against those determined to save her soul… (less)

Have you read The Nowhere Child, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR