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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
This book was on my mind for about a week after I finished it. I actually woke in the middle of the night wondering where Emma could be. I identified well with the main character and could see myself doing the same things that she did. I thought the writing was very good, but it was a very sad, difficult book to read.
I couldn't stop reading this book nor thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. Richmond sucks you in with her short, easy chapters that make the reader almost as crazy with desire to find the missing child as the Abby, the main character.
Abby, engaged to Jake and soon to be step mom to Emma, finds herself in a nightmare when Emma disappears into the fog one weekend when Abby is in charge of her. Thus begins a frantic search to find Emma and in the process try to salvage relationship with Jake. By day 232 Abby finds herself searching for Emma alone in a foreign land. She refuses to give up a gut instinct that tells her Emma is alive and not dead.
Michelle Richmond weaves a story of what being a real parent looks like and feels like, what being in a relationship where tragedy strikes looks and feels like, and what it costs to not give up on gut instinct. Just as with the other book of hers that I have read, No One You Know, Richmond takes her characters across many miles as they search out the answers to their questions. She also includes into her books research about some topic that the main character connects with. In this book it happens to be memory.
A very captivating and intriguing read.
Abby, engaged to Jake and soon to be step mom to Emma, finds herself in a nightmare when Emma disappears into the fog one weekend when Abby is in charge of her. Thus begins a frantic search to find Emma and in the process try to salvage relationship with Jake. By day 232 Abby finds herself searching for Emma alone in a foreign land. She refuses to give up a gut instinct that tells her Emma is alive and not dead.
Michelle Richmond weaves a story of what being a real parent looks like and feels like, what being in a relationship where tragedy strikes looks and feels like, and what it costs to not give up on gut instinct. Just as with the other book of hers that I have read, No One You Know, Richmond takes her characters across many miles as they search out the answers to their questions. She also includes into her books research about some topic that the main character connects with. In this book it happens to be memory.
A very captivating and intriguing read.
I thought the relationships were somewhat interesting and the story kept my attention, but some portions of the book were a bit long and found myself skipping pages to find out how the book finished.
Good story but took way to long to tell it. I found myself skipping paragraphs.
Difficult subject to read. Author does a good job painting a picture of the struggles, declines in relationships, guilt, obsession, and hope that can come from such a traumatic experience. There seemed to be a big focus on the photography at the beginning of the book that felt like should have had more significance, but maybe just demonstrating that photos are only worth so much hen compared to one's actual memory.
Ummm...scary, interesting, and had far more adult content than I needed to read.
I really wanted to love this book. I'm born and raised in SF and LOVED that Richmond included so much about SF - street names, restaurants, parts of our history that makes our city so special. She even got the streets and directions correct - something I complain about in movies.
However, the storyline and plot were just not there. There was a lot of technical information about cameras and film developing that was just too much. Plus, the connections she tried to make between photography and memory and the hell she was living with the disappearance of Emma was just missing and grasping for straws. It also dragged on in the middle.
Read this if you like SF and it's history and can handle a book dragging on.
However, the storyline and plot were just not there. There was a lot of technical information about cameras and film developing that was just too much. Plus, the connections she tried to make between photography and memory and the hell she was living with the disappearance of Emma was just missing and grasping for straws. It also dragged on in the middle.
Read this if you like SF and it's history and can handle a book dragging on.
This novel brings to life every parents worst nightmare - losing a child and then facing each day afterward. In this case the main character is the soon-to-be stepmother Abby. In the first pages Abby describes her memory of the events that lead to Emma's disappearance and throughout the book she repeats the words we hear so often; some version of, "I only looked away for a second."
The beginning and end of the novel captured me. The middle felt slow and repetitive though it did offer flashbacks to Ally's past, both as a child herself, as a teen, and as an adult. The storyline is based on Ally's ever-altered memory of the day Emma disappeared and her constant struggle to find the missing girl and therefore fix her relationship with Emma's father, Jake.
During her search she questions who she really fell in love with more, Jake or his daughter. Much of Abby's relationship with her own mother is tainted by the fact that she's never really wanted to be a wife and mother - she instead wanted to make a difference with her career; with the other things she planned to do in her life.
Though the book focuses mainly on the disappearance and search for missing Emma, through the flashbacks and other characters that come into Abby's life during the search, readers will also see a transformation of character beginning to take place within the whole of Abby's life - she's forced to make hard decisions and take altered paths to rebuild from within.
The beginning and end of the novel captured me. The middle felt slow and repetitive though it did offer flashbacks to Ally's past, both as a child herself, as a teen, and as an adult. The storyline is based on Ally's ever-altered memory of the day Emma disappeared and her constant struggle to find the missing girl and therefore fix her relationship with Emma's father, Jake.
During her search she questions who she really fell in love with more, Jake or his daughter. Much of Abby's relationship with her own mother is tainted by the fact that she's never really wanted to be a wife and mother - she instead wanted to make a difference with her career; with the other things she planned to do in her life.
Though the book focuses mainly on the disappearance and search for missing Emma, through the flashbacks and other characters that come into Abby's life during the search, readers will also see a transformation of character beginning to take place within the whole of Abby's life - she's forced to make hard decisions and take altered paths to rebuild from within.
As oddly sad as books about missing children always are, but framed beautifully around photography.