Don’t you always want to know the truth?

Synopsis

She’s in your home…

Leigh Simons can’t say for sure what made her do it. A moment of madness, perhaps, but when the young, loud and gorgeous waitress at her favorite coffee shop reveals she is homeless, Leigh offers her the empty room in her house.

In your head…

Gina is the perfect lodger; Leigh, lonely and frustrated with her life, becomes infatuated with the woman – her boldness, her zeal. If only Leigh could be more like Gina…

And missing without trace.

So when Leigh returns from a work trip she’s shocked to find Gina missing. Where could the young woman have gone…and why?

Leigh fears that something terrible has happened – why else would Gina leave her?

But as she sets out to find her missing lodger, what Leigh discovers changes everything she knows about Gina….and her own life, too.

My review

Leigh Simons doesn’t know why she did it. Was she feeling lonely? Was she hoping that Gina somehow would inspire her? But Leigh did it anyway, and how quickly she made her offer, at the same moment she regretted it the moment the words left her mouth. Because who is her right mind would offer a total stranger, a woman you only know as the barista where you buy your daily shot of cafeïne, to rent the spare room in your house?

But that is exactly what Leigh did when she learned that Gina was lookig for a place to stay. While initially Leigh enjoys Gina’s company, there are also moments of frustrations. And Leigh also struggling at work, with someone who doesn’t understand personal space, an annoying, unknown lodger is the last thing Leigh needs. However, when Gina disappear with just a small note without any further explanation, Leigh wonders what happened to her.But nothing is what it seems, not only whenever Gina is involved, and Leigh’s search for answers turns her whole world upside down.

I started reading this book, having no idea which turn it would take. What I did know, is that there would be no way on earth that I would let a complete stranger stay at my place. So I thought that Leigh was rather crazy in that specific case. But I could also see how lonely she was, and maybe letting Gina stay at her place, would make that lonely feeling disappear.

I could also comprehend the ‘attraction’, as Gina seems this bubbly, fairly kind of person, someone you somehow would admire for just being her.

Leigh is the kind of person that you just feel sorry for. She is in a relationship with Matt, but they are not living together. She is good at her job, but that one presence makes her feel uncomfortable.

She is the suspicious kind of woman, but also an impulsive one, putting her in situations like having a lodger against better judgement or finding herself forced to follow an anger management course. It’s clear I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes…

But I also admired her persistence, she doesn’t just accept that Gina is gone, but she wants a real explanation. And when the police dismiss her, she finds another way to find out the truth. Even when she gets a few scares, she is adamant to find out what happened to make Gina leave.

Perhaps I have read and watched too many thrillers, but my mind went in overdrive. I thought of several scenarios, one scenario being more plausible than another. But whatever my thoughts were, I couldn’t figure out what truly happened to Gina by just keeping to read.

The author manages perfectly to have me sitting on the edge of my seat, reading page after page. Unexpected things keep happening, several twists made me feel more confused than before.

Even if the end and the final revelations left me a bit hanging, as it felt a bit hasted and pulled together, and Leigh’s final action was both understandable and at the same time not, I enjoyed reading this book, and found myself in a rare position of just having no idea what the truth was. A thriller worth of its name!