Same Activities Draw People Together
Book Review of The Girl You Lost by Kathryn Croft
Recently, on a Sunday afternoon, my husband was watching sports, and I was in the room, hammering away at the keys on my laptop.
There was an advert for jet ski championships, and just as I thought it, my husband said: “If there’s an activity, they turn it into a competition.”
When I listened to The Girl You Lost by Kathryn Croft, I frequently shook my head, and my thoughts were along similar lines: seems no matter what the activity, people who all engage in it find a way to create a club. Even when that activity is inappropriate.
Even when it’s rape.
Consider yourself warned.
About Kathryn Croft, the author
Croft was born in Watford, but grew up in Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom, with her husband and two children. After living in London for twelve years, she returned to her childhood town.
She has a degree in Media Arts with English literature but is also a qualified secondary school teacher in English. She started writing Behind Closed Doors in 2010, but only finished it in 2012 after she had given up teaching to be a full-time writer. It took up to her third book to consider herself a writer.
Kathryn Croft writes psychological thrillers and has already sold over 1.5 million copies of her books. Her third book, The Girl With No Past, was at number one in the Amazon UK chart for over four weeks. All her books have reached the number one spot in the UK Apple Books chart, and she even appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s bestsellers list.
These are the books of Kathryn Croft: Behind Closed Doors (2013), The Stranger Within (2014), The Girl with No Past (2015), The Girl You Lost (2016), While You Were Sleeping (2016), Silent Lies (2018), The Warning (2018), The Other Husband (2021), The Lying Wife (2022), The Mother’s Secret (2022), The Neighbour Upstairs (2022), The Suspect (2023), The Lie (2023).
You can read more about this author on her website.
The story
I think it must be horrible to lose a child, and not know whether they are still alive, not knowing what has happened to them, where they are, what they look like, always wondering if you will ever see them again.
And then it happens. Then a young adult stands in front of you and tells you they’re your lost child. Will you recognize them — instinctively feel they are yours? Every mother wants to believe they will, but will they really?
In this book, Helena is six months old when she’s abducted on an outing with her grandmother. Simone and Matt grieve the loss of their daughter for years and never have another child.
Eighteen years later, a young woman called Grace stands in front of Simone and tells her she’s actually Helena. At the same time she confesses to committing a murder, after she has defended herself because someone has almost raped her. Simone goes with her, instinctively wanting to protect Grace, even though she’s not sure it really is her child.
But the dead body is gone, and then Grace disappears after spending a night on the couch in Simone and Matt’s apartment.
Simone, a reporter, leaves no stone unturned to search for Grace, because she wants to know for sure if she really is Helena.
The story that unfolds is horrible and mesmerizing, with a twist at the end I haven’t seen coming until I was almost at the end of the book.
Keeping the suspense
I really loved how the author has kept the suspense in this book throughout. I couldn’t stop listening — even though I had to — because I just had to know what had happened.
There are some triggering scenes in this book, and it reminded me that there really are horrible people out there. If something easily triggers you, this book is not for you!
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