Great Book Ecapes

A well deserved 5 stars from me, I just love a book that is not predictable!

This is my first Lisa Gardner book I have read and love her writing style.

Brilliant…..

Intriguing, mysterious, perplexing, disconcerting, exciting, sad, beautiful, painful….

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Synopsis

I’m in hospital after crashing my car. I am afraid. The only thing that I can think about is Vero. I know I have to save her but why couldn’t I find her? She’s just a little girl.

The man standing in my hospital room tells me we are married but there is no Vero. That six months ago I suffered a traumatic brain injury which caused changes to my personality. I have dramatic mood swings, an inability to concentrate and large gaps in my memory. I’m much easier to anger these days. And I drink. All of which he says explains the car accident and my confusion.

Now a Sergeant Wyatt Foster is investigating. He has questions about the car accident. He has concerns about my husband. And he’s worried about a missing girl.

He would like to know what happened to me. So would I.

My name is Nicky Frank. This is my life.

Watch me crash and burn.

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My Review

How do you review a plot that is so brilliantly perplexing? Right from the start I could not guess at ‘what comes next’ or even ‘can I believe what I have just read’.

More than once I felt the narrative from ‘Nicky’ was sharing intimate moments of her confusing past with me alone. I felt the sadness and misery, the longing for it all to go away; but also couldn’t wait for the next sentence to reveal more and more.

Please don’t let this book end but please let me get to the end to discover the terrible secrets!

So, Crash & Burn is a book of secrets that kept me in suspense the whole way through. So many times I said to myself, whoa didn’t see that coming, no way. How many surprises can one book have? Let me tell you lots and lots…

Nicky’s car goes over the edge and down a ravine, injured and bloody she crawls back up onto the road and tells the emergency crew to find Vero.

This is not at all a depressing book to read, there are some lovely descriptive lines that says much more. I love the description of the Audi Q5 car she is driving:

“One of those vehicles designed to haul groceries, half of a soccer team plus the family dog, and look damned good doing it.”

This is Nicky’s third concussion and her head is already a mess of confusion and hidden memories. Thomas Frank her husband sits at her bedside, he is the man she both loves and fears, why?

‘Vero wants to Fly’ Who is Vero, and what does it mean? What a terrible start to life Vero had, how do you survive something like that?

Investigating a car crash Sergeant Wyatt is drawn into towards hints of child trafficking, forced prostitution, and a thirty year old kidnapping. Wyatt cares about his job and there is a nice touch when Gardner sets out how he will do all he can to find answers rather than hand this case over:

“Wyatt had given the matter a lot of thought, mostly because it was his thought to give”

When Wyatt goes to interview Nicky at home after her accident, he sees her battered and bruised face. I read this with the thrill of excitement – game on, I thought knowing that Gardner was going to throw something different to her readers:

“But the woman was standing. Head up. Eyes clear. Wyatt felt that thrum, big-game hunter on the prowl. This morning was looking good.”

Reading this book is like trying to untangle a ball of string that has become completely tangled. Where is the beginning and where is the end, and how has it got so messed up?

Wyatt is also starting out with Tessa an Investigator who becomes involved in the case. In trying to solve it their relationship will be tested because of the facts.

I loved this book, it kept me trying to guess all the way through, incorrectly I might add!
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Many thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for a copy in return for an honest review.