Marco and Anne have plans to attend their neighbor’s dinner party when their babysitter cancels at the last minute. Anne wants to stay home with 6-month old Cora but Marco talks Anne into going to the party anyway – since they share a wall with the neighbors, they can leave Cora at home and take turns checking on her every half hour. What could happen when they’re right next door? When they return home at the end of the night they find an open front door, the crib empty, and Cora is missing. Suspicion immediately turns to the parents and the detective on the case, Detective Rasbach, knows the couple is hiding something. As secrets come to light, everyone will discover that the truth is so much more.
If you were to tell me that this book is based on a Lifetime movie or is being made into a Lifetime movie, I would totally believe it. The plot has so many twists and turns and it seemed like it kept getting crazier and crazier! Every time I thought I had figured out what happened, some new information would pop up that would make me completely change my mind. It seemed like every chapter brought a new twist, each one more outrageous than the last, but I kept reading because I had to find out what happened to baby Cora.
That being said, it’s kind of hard to talk much about the plot of this book without giving anything away.
Neither Marco nor Anne is a likable character. They have so many secrets between them that I had to wonder if they even knew each other. There were so many things that were kept hidden from each other, from the police, from Anne’s parents – it drove me crazy. In fact, the only person I actually liked was Detective Rasbach and that was because he was just focused on doing his job, figuring out what happened to Cora, and he seemed somewhat competent.
The writing in this book is fairly simple. There is a lot of telling about what is going on and not much showing. Additionally, the book is written in the present tense which I found to be a bit jarring at first, but I quickly became used to it.
I’m still thinking about the ending of the book. There is a twist at the end that I guess was supposed to be shocking but it didn’t really work for me. In a way, I understand where the author was going with the ending but I couldn’t see the path that the characters would take after the end of the book. I kind of wish the author had ended the book differently.
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I had the same feelings about the ending of this book. Nevertheless, Shari Lapena’s style of writing is enjoyable, not too deep, not too “pink”, but fair enough to be one’s guilty pleasure 😀 She’s got a new book by the way!
Thanks! It’s good to hear someone else had the same thoughts. I’ll look for her new book!