Thursday, July 20, 2017

Bring Her Home by David Bell


Bring Her Home by David Bell
  • ISBN-10: 0399584447 Paperback $16
  • Publisher: Berkley (July 11, 2017), 464 pages.
Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley.

The blurb:
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...
 


Review:
I had planned to read just a few chapters of Bring Her Home and found myself unable to stop.  A single father raising his beautiful headstrong daughter rushes to the hospital after having received word that she's been found after having disappeared for days.  She's been beaten and is barely recognizable but her best friend is barely recognizable from her deadly beating.

The police investigation leads the father to discover the crazy risks that his fifteen year old daughter has been taking.  He can't stay angry with her, he just wants her to wake up healthy.  

As the story progresses, there are even more uncomfortable discoveries.  He has to face the final days of his wife's life and that what he'd expected and understood might have been completely wrong.  

Bring Her Home is a well crafted and a thoroughly engrossing read! 

About the Author:
David Bell is a bestselling and award-winning author whose work has been translated into multiple foreign languages. He’s currently an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he directs the MFA program. He received an MA in creative writing from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a PhD in American literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati. His previous novels are Since She Went Away, Somebody I Used to KnowThe Forgotten GirlNever Come BackThe Hiding Place, and Cemetery Girl.