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becks410 's review for:

Where I Left Her by Amber Garza
2.0

Great premise, poor execution.

Whitney drops her daughter Amelia off at her friend Lauren's house for a sleepover, the next day, her daughter is missing. Whitney can't remember where she dropped her off. Right off the bat this doesn't measure up.

Whitney is a helicopter mom, overbearing and overprotective to the point that I felt exhausted for Amelia.
We get Whitney's dialog and inner thoughts throughout this whole book, and she is sad that her almost 16 year old daughter doesn't want to do everything with her, and wishes for the old days when things were different. All of her friends are telling her this is normal teenage behavior but she just can't let it go. It is mentioned so many times during this book it began to make me just roll my eyes and zone out until that part was over.

The police thing Amelia is a run away, Whitney's ex husband Dan doesn't think much better, he has issues with his ex wife mostly because he believes deep down that Whitney cheated on him and that Amelia isn't his daughter, because of her eye color.

This story is told in the present tense, then we go back 8 weeks before drop off so we know what life was like leading up to everything that happens.
We also get flashbacks to Whitney's teenage years. It isn't specified they are her teenage years until later in the book but it isn't hard to figure out. These flashbacks are randomly thrown in and honestly don't make sense at first, you have to figure out what you are reading at that moment in time.

As we progress to over 30 hours after drop off, answers start to come together, and this is when the wheels fall off completely, but trust me they were wobbly before.

The ending was so far fetched it just was beyond the point of extending belief for entertainment, even for me.

Below is the ending of the book so I remember, so don't read unless you want to know what happens!
Spoiler Whitney and Dans baby died of SIDS hours after birth. Whitney's old friend from her flashbacks had her baby girl on the same day. When her friend Milly was sleeping, Whitney went into her room and switched the newborns and their tags and stole Milly's baby. She then drugged Milly and made it look like a suicide/overdose. Amelia's friend Lauren was Milly's older daughter, she figured out what happened and tried to get Amelia to turn her mom in and prove they were sisters. In the end, everyone believed the story that Whitney made up that it was Milly's idea to swap the babies then she killed herself. She ends up getting away with it, and it is hinted that her daughter is going to come home to her as soon as she can get away from Lauren.
Spoiler