It was a treat, she said. An adventure. A train journey to the mainland. Six-year-old Lara Arden and her older sister Georgia happily fill in their colouring books as their mum pops to the buffet in search of crisps. She never returns. Two little girls abandoned. Alone.
Present day
Twenty years later, and Lara is now a detective inspector on her native Isle of Wight, still searching for answers to her mother's disappearance.
A call comes in. A small child, a boy, has been left abandoned on a train. Like Lara, he has no relatives to look after him. It feels as if history is being repeated - but surely this is a coincidence?
A series of murders
Before Lara can focus on the boy's plight, she's faced with a series of murders. They feature different victims in very different circumstances, but they all have one thing in common: they all leave children - alone - behind.
So who is targeting Lara? What do these abandoned souls have in common? And how does this connect to the mystery of Lara's missing mother?
This book is massively intriguing. It got its hooks into me from the start with the mysterious disappearance of Lara's mother twenty years earlier and now a similar case in the present day.
Not only are there two intriguing missing persons, but there is also a series of brutal murders that are leaving children orphaned. It all seems to link back to Lara who is now a police detective and she has a race against time to stop the killer before someone she knows becomes the next victim.
There are some amazing characters in this book and they are so very well developed that they virtually leap out from the page. I loved Lara but I also really liked Lara's colleague Jordan; his personal life is falling apart but he still manages to keep a close eye on his family. I'm Not There is the first book in a new series set on the Isle of Wight, so I do hope to catch up with these characters again in the future.
The writing is flawless; it's vivid, descriptive and very easy to imagine the scenes in your head. I really couldn't tell which direction the story was going in as there are so many different threads weaving through the novel, but they all get tied up perfectly at the end.
Unpredictable and gripping, I'm Not There is a hugely enjoyable police procedural with an intriguing mystery at its heart. You can't go wrong with a Hobeck Books novel and I'm Not There is no exception. Recommended.
I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
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