Here and Gone by Haylen Beck

Release Date: 20 June 2017

My Rating: 4.5/5

Audra, escaping her abusive husband and a past fraught with addiction, drives cross-country with her two children. When she’s pulled over in the middle of nowhere she panics, fearing her husband’s reach. The officer brings her in for questioning and she is separated from her children. When she demands to know where they have been taken she is told no children were found with her. The search for her missing children twists and turns back on her, no one willing to believe her tale, until a stranger from across the country, with a story eerily similar to her own, races to help her find her children before it’s too late.

What an excellent suspense thriller. Audra is brutally believable and the escalation of her situation is expertly crafted and nail-bitingly tense. Her strengths and weaknesses add up to an extremely sympathetic character: a desperate mother on a mission. Her background gives complexity to the situation. Her compatriot is a fun addition and those she encounters along the way, friend and foe, add depth to the tale. A MUST-READ for thriller fans this summer. ~Thanks to Penguin for the ARC~