Review: Bring Her Home by David Bell

☆☆➹⁀☆ 5 stars☆➹⁀☆☆

What it’s about:

Just a year and a half after the tragic death of his wife, Bill Price’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Summer, and her best friend, Haley, disappear. Days later, the girls are found in a city park. Haley is dead at the scene, while Summer is left beaten beyond recognition and clinging to life.

As Bill holds vigil over Summer’s bandaged body, the only sound the unconscious girl can make is one cryptic and chilling word: No. And the more time Bill spends with Summer, the more he wonders what happened to her. Or if the injured girl in the hospital bed is really his daughter at all.

When troubling new questions about Summer’s life surface, Bill is not prepared for the aftershocks. He’ll soon discover that both the living and the dead have secrets. And that searching for the truth will tear open old wounds that pierce straight to the heart of his family…

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My Thoughts:

Bring Her Home by David Bell is an intense thriller/mystery. The short chapters mirror character Bill Price’s frenetic search for his daughter, Summer.

“Wow” was the first word that came to mind when I finished Bring Her Home. I haven’t finished a book in one sitting in a very long time. Main character Bill Price tells the story of the disappearance of his daughter and her best friend, Haley. His desperation made him seem like an unreliable narrator. The story is fraught with anguish and desperation. As a parent, I couldn’t help but get pulled into the stomach-clenching drama of a missing teenaged girl. As a mystery lover, I relished each red herring and plot twist.

There are many red herrings and wild goose chases as details of Haley and Summer’s lives are slowly revealed. Naturally, their parents are aghast at learning how little they knew of their teens’ daily lives. While one of my two main suspects ended up being the perpetrator, I thoroughly enjoyed deliberating over each possible suspect and the major reveals as the story reached its zenith.

I’ll not destroy a good read by giving away plot details. I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the story, pace and well-developed characters. The details in the parent-child and teen-friend relationships were perfect. Bring Her Home was my first book by David Bell, but it won’t be my last! It’s a page-turning, heart-racing read.