I can’t seem to keep away from Gardner’s books! When my almost 11-year-old saw me reading Alone, his comment was “Hey it is a Lisa Gardner book, Umma’s favorite!” So yeah, even he knows my obsession with her books! For those of you who don’t know, ‘Umma’ means mother.
Bobby Dodge, a Boston cop, is also a sniper in the STOP team – a SWAT-like group of law officers who gets called for emergency domestic incidents. When he gets called in for an incident at Jimmy and Catherine Gagnon’s residence, he does not expect it to end in him pulling the trigger. Jimmy’s father turns out to be an influential judge who accuses Dodge of colluding with Catherine to murder Jimmy. At the same time, the judge wants custody of his grandson and accuses Catherine of abusing her son. With his career on the line, Dodge doesn’t know what to believe anymore. Did he make the right decision when he pulled the trigger on Jimmy? Or was it the biggest mistake of his life?
The book’s initial chapters gave me a déjà vu feeling. It was similar to Gardner’s Find Her. A pedophile kidnapping a girl, locking her up, and abusing her. But that was the extent of the similarity. The circumstances and the plot of both books are entirely different.
Like all Gardner’s books, this didn’t disappoint me either. She has kind of become my auto-buy author. I’ve also noticed that whenever I come back to thriller books, I devour them. It feels as if I had missed an important part of my life. No books in any other genre have given me this kind of feeling.
The book alternates between various character’s viewpoints. Gardner’s strength lies in her narrative from the villain’s point of view. Only very few authors manage to pull this off perfectly. Both Bobby’s and Catherine’s characters have been developed really well. Even no, I’m not really sure which side Catherine was on. I normally don’t like open endings. But here it was perfect. It left me with a touch of curiosity about Catherine.
I was pleasantly surprised when D.D.Warren made an appearance. I had not known that this is her first book. She is my favorite character by Gardner. DD didn’t have much of a role in the book. But she left an impact on all the scenes that she was a part of.
The only thing missing was a huge plot twist. Of course, there were plot twists but nothing major that left me stunned. I could guess most of the things and the ones that I didn’t, failed to make an impact. To be honest, this does not take away anything from how I felt about the book. It’s just that every Gardner book I read raises my expectations. So, my bar is a little higher than it would be with other authors. And this is also the reason I’m not giving it a 5.
If you love thrillers and haven’t read any of Lisa Gardner’s books yet, then you ARE missing out. Go get one right now!
My Rating: 4.5⭐/5.
