I Found You by Lisa Jewell
Published by Atria Books on April 25, 2017
Pages: 352
Source: the publisher
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A young bride, a lonely single mother, and an amnesiac man of dubious origin lie at the heart of New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell’s next suspenseful drama that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Paula Hawkins.

In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.

Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. Their annual trip to the quaint seaside town is passing by uneventfully, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just that he’s playing the role of protective older brother.

Two decades of secrets, a missing husband, and a man with no memory are at the heart of this brilliant new novel, filled with the “beautiful writing, believable characters, pacey narrative, and dark secrets” (London Daily Mail) that make Lisa Jewell so beloved by audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Why I Read It:

I truly thought suspense/thriller books and I got off to a bad start – until I read this one. I read the one that everyone else was reading a few years ago and I think I just got caught up in the hype. Hype and I don’t mix well, and I didn’t love that book like so many others did, and I never saw the movie. Honestly I never cared to pick up other books similar to that one because I didn’t like the unnerved feeling I got, I didn’t feel the thrill of the mystery, I wasn’t excited about turning the pages, and I was just grossed out.

Then my friend Carrie recommended this one to me. And I couldn’t stop reading.

Review:

I  Found You by Lisa Jewell was awesome. I couldn’t put it down.

I’m not entirely sure what one thing made me love this book so much. It may have been the three POV’s: Alice and her three children with her admittedly-controversial past, her insecurity, her desperation to belong and feel love; Lily, the young newlywed who is brand-new to the country, who knows literally no one at all and has just realized that her husband has been lying about who he is; and the family at the center of the 1993-POV, not outwardly special in terms of money or social status but clearly in over their heads where the creepy guy that likes their daughter Kirsty is concerned. Maybe it was that each of the chapters were short and alternated between these three POV’s, which kept me on my toes, because I kept getting glimpses into each world. It was definitely because the author was smooth enough to release a detail or two in each chapter, which was like dropping breadcrumbs, and I hung on every word.

I read way past bedtime, until my eyes burned. And then I got up stupid-early to finish the book.

By the time I made the connections between all of the characters, I felt something for them all. I didn’t necessarily like them all, but I felt something for each of them, and my feelings were strong. Some of them made very stupid decisions and it made me unnerved and upset. I wanted to yell NO! through the pages and shake their shoulders and make them STOP WHAT THEY WERE DOING. Some of them were so desperate for attention or love or whatever that, I don’t know, but the desperation was so well-written that it was like a character itself. I didn’t trust any of them. Of course, I thought I had it all figured out – how it would all end. I was right with a few details, but I was mostly wrong.

Overall, it was thrilling. I absolutely loved reading this. I was glad about being wrong in some of the instances, but I was also horrified – this meant some of the characters that I liked weren’t so bad, but that I was wrong about others. (I really want to reread it now that I know the end!) I loved the twists and reveals, and I loved that I held my breath, turned the pages fast, and was literally on the edge of my seat throughout the entire book and felt a big exhale at the end.

It wasn’t a perfect book. I had to suspend disbelief at some details, like in a few places where I thought “Why aren’t they calling the police?” There were things like that. But this didn’t really bother me in terms of my reading experience.

I want to go back to Lisa Jewell’s backlist, but honestly I don’t know where to start. I’m so excited that I can love suspense/thriller/mystery books since I gave them another try. This was the absolute perfect re-introduction for me.