Title: The Nowhere Child
Expected publication: 26 June 2018
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/4
Book Description:
On a break between teaching photography classes, Kim Leamy
is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl
from her Kentucky home twenty-eight years earlier. He believes she is that
girl.
At first Kim brushes it off, but when she scratches the surface of her family background in Australia, questions arise that aren’t easily answered. To find the truth, she must travel to Sammy’s home of Manson, Kentucky, and into a dark past. As the mystery unravels and the town’s secrets are revealed, this superb novel builds towards a tense, terrifying, and entirely unexpected climax.
At first Kim brushes it off, but when she scratches the surface of her family background in Australia, questions arise that aren’t easily answered. To find the truth, she must travel to Sammy’s home of Manson, Kentucky, and into a dark past. As the mystery unravels and the town’s secrets are revealed, this superb novel builds towards a tense, terrifying, and entirely unexpected climax.
My musings:
How would you feel if you found out that everything you
believed about your family was a lie? Shocked? Confused? Betrayed? Perhaps all
of those, and more. When a stranger turns up on Kim Leamy’s doorstep in
Melbourne, telling her that he has reason to believe that she might be Sammy Went,
a little girl who disappeared at the age of two from her home in Manson,
Kentucky, never to be seen again, she dismisses it as a bad joke at first.
However, her mother has recently passed away, and there are some niggling
questions about her childhood Kim cannot answer. As evidence mounts, Kim knows
that there is only one way to find out – to go to America herself and retrace
Sammy’s last steps.
Am I the only one that finds skeletons in family closets
simply irresistible? As soon as I heard the premise of this novel, I knew that
I had to read it. Perhaps because my own mother died when I was a child, and
there are so many questions I will now never know the answer to. So I fully
“got” Kim’s confusion and frustration, and her need to find out the truth – as
shocking as it may turn out to be. Because what can be more confronting than
finding out that your parents may not be who they have claimed to be, and that
you may have a whole other family in another country – a family who gave you up
for dead twenty-eight years ago! White doesn’t leave it at that, he also throws
in some interesting plot twists and settings that added something unique to
this story. The “then” and “now” timeline lets us explore the events that led
to little Sammy’s disappearance, and finally give us the answer to Kim’s many
questions – though they may not be what you had expected.
I admit that despite its intriguing premise, I had a few
issues with being able to connect to the characters, which made me feel a little
less invested in the mystery than I had hoped. A couple of POVs felt
unnecessary to me, stalling the story and distracting from the main narrative,
although other readers may disagree. Personally, I found I wished for a bit
more suspense, as all the right foundations had been laid and were there for
the taking, but never totally paid off for me and I felt my interest waning a
few times as the story digressed from its main focus. That said, The Nowhere
Child was a quick and entertaining read that kept me turning the pages, and
although it did not raise goosebumps, the final denouement was satisfying and
held a few surprises in store. All in all it should appeal to lovers of mysteries
that are based around dysfunctional family dynamics, and those readers who like
a somewhat unusual setting (you will know what I mean when you read it). The
Nowhere Child is White’s debut novel, and I look forward to reading more from
this author in future – with his self-professed passion for true crime
podcasts, there may be some more interesting stories coming our way soon!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment