One moment in the past still haunting the present…

Synopsis

Two siblings, both missing for 20 years turn up within one day of each other. One dead. One alive.

It was an ordinary school day, the day I lost my little brother.

One moment he was on the roundabout and then was gone. Gone. Missing.

They all blamed me. I was in charge. Even though I was only ten years old.

They sent me away. The hurt, the shame, the questions. The not knowing.

I tried to move on.

It’s been nineteen years in exile and now somebody wants me back.

Someone with a dark secret. They hold the keys, they know the truth.

So, I need to return to the Welsh village of my childhood to find out who, because I have a secret, too…

I did something bad.

Diane Saxon’s standalone thriller is sure to plunge you into the dark world of secrets and lies.

My review

It has been twenty years ago since Caryn’s little brother has gone missing. While being a child herself at the time, she was the one everyone blamed. If only she had looked better after Lloyd, nothing would have happened to him.
So they sent her away, and Caryn has tried to made a life on her own, without her parents or friends from the Welsh village, trying to forget her dark past.
But when someone sends her a note, demanding her return, Caryn reluctantly return to the place she once used to call home, carrying her own secrets too. However, a village never forgets and  scepticism and unfriendliness surround her. And when a new murder takes  place, the some villagers find it easy to add one to one and end up with five…
Can Caryn finally discover what happened to her little brother so many years ago?  And what other secrets are being kept and what lies are being told?

This story surely gave me chills all over my body…
I can hardly imagine how it is when your sibling disappears, and I just cannot fathom how people dare suspect that you are the culprit, being a child yourself!
So obviously from the first minute, I was in Caryn’s corner, no matter what.

Also from that same first minute, I felt sorry for Caryn, as she seems also to be a victim of that horrible event… Of course, also her parents are victims, struggling with the loss of a lovely, yet also special, boy like Lloyd.
But Caryn, having been sent away to live with a grandmother she didn’t know, accused by her own parents, her own friends apparently abandoning her, she obviously didn’t have an easy time and my heart truly broke for her.

While reading this book, I realized how positive I truly am. When Caryn returned ‘home’, I was hoping for a warm welcome. And when not only her parents quickly dismissed her, but she was even being somehow bullied by some villagers… I also kept hoping for some kind of a happy end and that in the end Lloyd would be reunited with his family somehow.

But life isn’t always a fairy tale, just as this book shows us… People will go lengths to keep their secrets, and I was shocked when the truth was revealed.
Maybe I had a little hunch, but I couldn’t imagine the extend of the lies and secrets, and was left flabbergasted when the true characters were revealed and just the evil of some of them!

But do not despair, because it’s not all doom and gloom! While Caryn’s search for the truth was definitely the main aspect of this story, the author shows us also the nicer and better bits of humanity. And real friends, even if separated by time and space, are easy to find each other again, despite all the past hurt.

I knew before I started in this book, I would be easily hooked, as my own desire to figure out the truth is just too big to ignore.
But I didn’t expect it would just be impossible to put the book away! Even with my lame attempt to move on with real life, my brain just kept going back to this story, trying to put all the pieces together.
So my sincere apologies to anyone who tried to have a decent conversation with me, but failed… it wasn’t you, it wasn’t me, it was this gripping, suspenseful story!