Sunday, September 2, 2012

Come Home by Lisa Scottoline

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

Lisa Scottoline has delivered taut thrillers with a powerful emotional wallop in her New York Times bestsellers Save Me, Think Twice, and Look Again. Now, with her new novel, Come Home, she ratchets up the suspense with the riveting story of a mother who sacrifices her future for a child from her past.
Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her—-though it is stressful—-and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team.
But Jill’s life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news: Jill’s ex-husband is dead. Abby insists that he was murdered and pleads with Jill to help find his killer. Jill reluctantly agrees to make a few inquiries and discovers that things don’t add up. As she digs deeper, her actions threaten to rip apart her new family, destroy their hard-earned happiness, and even endanger her own life. Yet Jill can’t turn her back on a child she loves and once called her own.
Come Home reads with the breakneck pacing of a thriller while also exploring the definition of motherhood, asking the questions: Do you ever stop being a mother? Can you ever have an ex-child? What are the limits to love of family?

My thoughts:
This was my iPod read last week.  I listened while running and working around the house.  This is the first fiction title of Scottoline I've read.  I listened to Best Friends, Occasional Enemies:The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter earlier this spring and I've thought about reading some of her other titles, but this was my first thriller.  Years ago I used to read this genre a lot, but I think after too many of them I was ready for some different types of books.

In this book Jill is blindsided when her ex-step daughter, who she was asked to stay away from and not communicate with by her ex-husband, shows up drunk on her doorstep to tell her that not only has her father died but that she believes he was murdered.  At one point in time Jill was a mother to Abby and her sister Victoria, but when the marriage ended in divorce her ex barred her from having contact with the girls she loves and stopped communicating with Megan, Jill's daughter from her first marriage.  Jill has been left feeling incomplete due to the circumstances of the divorce.  She has finally found her grove with a new medical practice, a fiance and Megan has been doing well with school and swim team.  Steven, her husband to be, is not thrilled with Abby and the chaos she brings into their lives by Jill can't seem to let go of Abby's claim.  As she looks at different details she becomes more and more convinced that something more than an accidental overdose is going on.

There was plenty of suspense, mystery and tension to keep me listening and running longer than I might have otherwise!

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312380823
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 4/10/2012
  • Pages: 384

Meet the Author

Lisa Scottoline
Lisa Scottoline is a New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award—winning author of eighteen novels. She has served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and her recent novel Look Again has been optioned for a feature film. She is a weekly columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and her columns have been collected in two books and optioned for television. She has 25 million copies of her books in print in the United States, and she has been published in thirty countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets. Visit her at www.lisascottoline.com.

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