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A review by melaniesreads
The Adoption by Jenna Kernan
4.0
3.5 stars
After reading and loving Jenna’s Agent Nadine Finch books I was looking forward to seeing where she would go with a standalone domestic thriller. From the first page it was unmistakably her writing, with it’s familiar easy flow and interesting characters.
This time the protagonist is Dani and it starts just as she is being released from a psychiatric facility. She entered the hospital voluntarily for depression, following a car crash that left her with a brain injury and her sister Shelby paralysed from the waist down. As well as the mental trauma Dani has been left unable to have children and also with the inability to recognise faces.
With gaps in her memory she has no idea why she was driving so fast that day or what led up to the accident. With her therapist encouraging her to move forward, her and husband Tate adopt a little girl called Willow. Then Willow is taken and it seems everyone has been lying to her……
As with all Jenna’s books it is the characters that held my attention here. Prosopagnosia, the fascinating condition that Dani was left with really heightens her paranoia. I can’t even imagine being unable to recognise people you are with every day. Even little things like her husband wearing a yellow shirt after researching that it is the most unworn colour by men and women showed the detail the author has included. As for Tate my guilty radar had pinned him as dodgy no matter how thoughtful he was doing that.
While the first half of the book is slow and often repetitive it is worth sticking with for what comes next. It transforms from a tortoise to a hare and as the lies and betrayals are revealed it is pure dynamite, amazingly plotted and with a very unexpected ending.
After reading and loving Jenna’s Agent Nadine Finch books I was looking forward to seeing where she would go with a standalone domestic thriller. From the first page it was unmistakably her writing, with it’s familiar easy flow and interesting characters.
This time the protagonist is Dani and it starts just as she is being released from a psychiatric facility. She entered the hospital voluntarily for depression, following a car crash that left her with a brain injury and her sister Shelby paralysed from the waist down. As well as the mental trauma Dani has been left unable to have children and also with the inability to recognise faces.
With gaps in her memory she has no idea why she was driving so fast that day or what led up to the accident. With her therapist encouraging her to move forward, her and husband Tate adopt a little girl called Willow. Then Willow is taken and it seems everyone has been lying to her……
As with all Jenna’s books it is the characters that held my attention here. Prosopagnosia, the fascinating condition that Dani was left with really heightens her paranoia. I can’t even imagine being unable to recognise people you are with every day. Even little things like her husband wearing a yellow shirt after researching that it is the most unworn colour by men and women showed the detail the author has included. As for Tate my guilty radar had pinned him as dodgy no matter how thoughtful he was doing that.
While the first half of the book is slow and often repetitive it is worth sticking with for what comes next. It transforms from a tortoise to a hare and as the lies and betrayals are revealed it is pure dynamite, amazingly plotted and with a very unexpected ending.