I Found You

February 15, 2017
Three lonely people meet when their lives are in upheaval and learn they are also connected by a haunting 20-year-old mystery.Single mother Alice offers a stranger sitting on the beach in the rain a windbreaker, and, upon learning he has no recollection of who he is or how he got there, she invites him to stay in her guesthouse. Her children give him the name Frank, and Alice works to help him regain his memory and learn how he ended up in the north of England. Near London, Lily, a young wife from the Ukraine who has been living in England with her new husband, panics when he fails to return home. After the local police inform Lily his passport is fake, she begins to search for him to determine whom she married and why he suddenly abandoned her. These two stories set in present-day Britain are interwoven with a third story set in 1993 of a family's annual vacation to the beach, which takes a troubling and ominous turn after the 15-year-old daughter, Kirsty, begins dating a local 19-year-old guy, Mark. As Jewell's (The Girls in the Garden, 2016, etc.) novel progresses, the tensions in each story heighten as the characters must confront questions of whether we ever truly know other people or if we always keep part of ourselves hidden away. While these are not new questions, Jewell's page-turner approaches them in a riveting manner. Its numerous twists avoid predictability, and the novel is well-paced as it weaves the three narratives together. Toward the end of the novel, as Alice, Frank, and Lily meet and begin to learn who has brought them together, the plot moves a bit too quickly for a full explanation of everyone's identity and motivations. Yet even these too-short character back stories serve to circle back and reinforce the novel's central question: how much does knowing a person in the present count for? Dark and moody, this is a mystery with substance.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2017

In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice encounters a man sitting on the beach near her home. The lightly dressed stranger has no idea how he got there and recalls nothing of himself. A standard opening for an amnesiac tale right? Against her better judgment, Alice invites him inside. Here begins an intriguing story of a young bride, a lonely single mother, and perhaps a murder that happened decades earlier. Drawn to this visitor, Alice has mixed feelings about his memory returning, but as the days go by, the man gets disturbing flashes of his former self. Meanwhile, in London, newlywed Lily frantically searches for her husband, who fails to come home one evening, but the clues she finds make her second guess her marriage. As the mysterious man, "Gray," peels back his clouded memory, a thoroughly compelling story unfolds. Who is he? What happened at this seaside town in his teenage years? VERDICT Jewell (The Girls in the Garden) is a wonderful storyteller. Her characters are believable, her writing is strong and poetic, and her narrative is infused with just enough intrigue to keep the pages turning. Readers of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Ruth Ware will love. [See Prepub Alert, 10/31/16.]--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
Alice Lake is 41, has three kids from three different men and a pack of stray dogs in a crumbling old house in Yorkshire, England. So, what is she doing taking in a stranger from the beach who has completely lost his memory? In London, Lily Monrose has been married to the handsome Carl for two weeks, and been away from her native Kiev for even less time. When Carl fails to return from work at his usual time, she can't convince the police that he is really missing. Until she does, after which she finds out he is not Carl at allso who is he? Woven between the two stories is a family vacation in 1993, when 17-year-old Gray gets a bad feeling from the too-smooth Mark Tate, who has designs on Gray's younger sister. The structure keeps the suspense level high, and Jewell manages surprising revelations all the way up to the ending. The mix of women's fiction and suspenseplus a no-nonsense 40-something heroine at the heart of the storymakes this a good fit for fans of Liane Moriarty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)