Abby Mason, professional photographer, is about to be married to Jake Balfour, the love of her life. Jake has a little 6-year old daughter named Emma. Over time, Abby has come to love Emma as her own and can’t wait until the 3 of them become a family.
And then one tragic moment changes everything. It all started out in such a normal way. Abby and Emma are taking a walk on the beach, Abby carrying along her camera as always. Abby spies a baby seal and stops to take a photo. When she is done photographing the seal, she reaches once again for Emma’s hand only to find that Emma is gone. . .
The days go by and Emma is not found. How does one go on? How long can one hope? Abby exhausts every measure in search of the little girl. She learns about memory and how it works, hoping to jar her own brain into remembering anything that will give them a clue as to where she might be. She studies the pictures she took on that fateful day hoping to see something new, something that will lead them to Emma.
Warning: This is a super hard book to read as a mother. I found myself particularly paranoid about my kids for quite a while after reading this book. One friend told me that this is the only book she’s read that she “cheated” on and read the last few pages first before actually reading the rest of the book, needing to know what happened.
I love the title of this story. I think it is so accurate for how one would feel in the face of such a horrific event. I found it interesting that she chose a woman that was not the child’s mother to be the main character and the one who “lost” Emma. That she was not Emma’s mother and not yet married to Emma’s father made the plot more intriguing and allowed for exploration into different sorts of human emotions. Had they both been Emma’s parents, the story might have been a bit more obvious.
Overall, I’d say the plot kept me going – I needed to know what happened also! – but the writing was just ok. I felt like maybe the story was dragged out a bit too much.
A large part of this story takes place in Costa Rica, where I live. It was fun to recognize names of towns and beaches that she mentioned.
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March 25th, 2009 at 8:08 am
I don’t know if I can take a book that would cause so much heartache, and I don’t need to be any more paranoid about my two kiddos.
But I wanted to stop by and offer you ladies a reward.. as a thank you..
check it out, here..
http://burtonreview.blogspot.com/2009/03/award-away.html
Marie, from The Burton Review
March 26th, 2009 at 4:18 am
I have this book on my TBR pile and I’ve wanted to read it for a very long time. The reason I dodn’t get to it is because, like you mentined, it is a difficult book to read if you’re a mother and I am. But I’ll be definitely reading it this year.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Great review! I personally loved this book, even though it WAS very hard to read (even though I’m not yet a mother, but I do have a niece whom I care very deeply for, so I thought a lot about her while reading the book).