Unmissing by Minka Kent

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Psychological Suspense
Content: Strong language; A woman is kidnapped, raped, and tortured, but no real detail is given

 

A return from the past knocks a family dangerously off-balance in a novel of spiraling suspense by Washington Post and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Minka Kent.

Merritt Coletto and her husband, Luca, have the life they dreamed of: a coastal home, a promising future, and a growing family. That dream ends with a late-night knock on the door.

Weak, broken, and emaciated, it’s Luca’s first wife, Lydia. Missing for ten years, presumed dead, and very much alive, she has quite a story. Her kidnapping. A torturous confinement that should’ve ended with her dead. And finally, escape. Racked with guilt over the beautiful life they’ve built, Merritt and Luca agree to help get Lydia back on her feet—it’s the least they can do.

But the more enmeshed Lydia becomes in Merritt’s family, the more questions Merritt has. What is it about Lydia that’s especially unnerving? Why hasn’t she gone to the police with her harrowing tale? What does she really want of them? The answers, when they come, are terrifying.

Because Lydia isn’t the only one with secrets. 

 

This is the fourth book I've read by this author, and I count her as one of my favorite authors for this genre. I think it's mostly because I really like her writing style, and most of the time I'm able to like her protagonists. Which is something I find very hard to do in this genre. This time I didn't find any of the characters particularly likable, but the writing pulled me in anyway. 

Like all books of this genre, there were twists and turns. I found this one to be pretty predictable, even though the last twist surprised me. I mean I thought it was a possibility early on, but then dismissed it because of the way the book was written. So, by the time I got to the end, I had completely forgotten that theory. I think this actually speaks a lot to how implausible this book is at times. And that's my main issue with it. The characters didn't seem consistent enough throughout the book; meaning there was too big of a personality change at the end for some of them. I think it's incredibly hard to write characters like this when writing them in first person. The goal is to show the reader who the characters are, but without giving too much away, while still having the twists seem believable. Throughout the book, I didn't think the characters acted in ways that real people would have acted in the same situations. And a lot of things the characters did just didn't make sense for the situations they were in. 

While reading other reviews for this book, I came across another reviewer that said a lot of the same things I feel about this book and author in general, and as she put it, this author's writing bolstered a plot that wasn't so great. I completely agree with that. And while I found flaws in this story, I still love reading this author's books. They are entertaining and hard to put down.

Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas and Mercer for providing me with an ARC of this book.