Length:  324 pages

Please note that the cover image leads to a universal Amazon buy link for the book

What they say:The sun is out. Your little boy is smiling. The next time you look… he’s gone.

Lana Cross would do anything to protect her perfect family but on a trip to an adventure park, they slip out of her sight. When she finds her husband, he’s out cold on the forest floor. Then the truth sinks in: Cooper, her four-year-old son, is missing.

No one stopped the man carrying the sleeping boy. The park cameras don’t show where he went. Then Lana receives an anonymous message, telling her to visit a local school with a horrifying history…

This is no random attack. Whoever took Cooper is playing a twisted game, and if Lana wants to find him, she must participate.

How could there be a link between the school and her missing son? And can Lana find her little boy before it’s too late?

The Review: First off I have to tell you that due to some issues with my Kindle I have no notes for this book and so this will not be the Pulitzer winning blog post I had hoped for, in fact, it may not even come close (I know, what?!) but, yes, you can already guess from the glib way I’m speaking that this will be another rave review that I’m quite hyper and excited about, and that if oyu don’t want this type of review you may need to just shut your eyes tight and avoid. (If not let’s go!)

So, at this stage you’re thinking ‘yeah, yeah’ another excellent book from Bookouture, right?’ YES! And wow, what a book! From the start this book was different in that it had a kick ass mother who SAVED her child from being abducted. They never do that in books, do they? The first few pages are that the mother looks out to the eerie sight of a swing moving in the wind, or a toy left on it’s own in the garden. Not here! Here, Lana (who I loved the whole way through-yay!) runs out when she sees a man land over her garden fence.  Lana does her epic ass kicking stuff, but in a way you yourself could, making your heart pound as you egg her on, and rescues her son. But the kidnapper leaves her with a message that he will be back. Yeeks!

Of course Lana and her husband are not going to let their little boy get taken and so they both try to keep him safe. Lana decides the best way is to find the kidnapper and this leads her into a dark and twisted online world where she doesn’t know who to trust, and also to various crime scenes, as she retraces and revisits old crimes, some in quite vivid, gory detail (I found it to be, anyhoo, people who like their tougher crimes probably wouldn’t flinch!) I thought it was excellent the way this was done, what better way to get characters into morbid, dark settings, than to have them want to venture there of their own free will? This added to your slowly bubbling sense of nervousness, you never knew if someone was waiting for Lana.

The suspense, the settings, both dark and light, were excellent, the characterisation perfection. In particular I adored her little man, Cooper, and her husband (whose name escapes me which is driving me nuts and apologies on this one, his story is as good as Lana’s) and a special mention has to go to a taxi driver who we meet later in the book (I won’t attempt to name him, as I don’t  don’t want to spell his name wrong, he deserves more than that!) I loved, as I always do, that actually, when it came down to it, Lana was rarely alone, she generally had a helping hand of some sort, which was excellent, as I’ve said before I don’t think a lead needs to be isolated to keep us worrying. The pacing was amazing, the settings so vividly drawn for us and so full of character that I was right there every step of the way, up until the outstanding climax that had every synapse firing. I adored this book so much and will be recommending it to anyone I know that even remotely likes thrillers. I’d love to say it should be made into a film but I don’t know that my nerves would take it. Excellent stuff and so, so, so (so!) recommended (go get!) Thanks so much to Bookouture and Netgalley for this book in return for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5 (and very likely my thriller of the year!)