The Book:
Find Me by Alafair Burke
Published January 11th 2022 by Harper
Date read: December 6, 2021
The Characters:
Hope
Lindsay
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
She calls herself Hope Miller, but she has no idea who she actually is. Fifteen years ago, she was found in a small New Jersey town thrown from an overturned vehicle, with no clue to her identity. Doctors assumed her amnesia was a temporary side effect of her injuries, but she never regained her memory. Hope eventually started a new life with a new name in a new town that welcomed her, yet always wondered what she may have left behind—or been running from. Now, fifteen years later, she’s leaving New Jersey to start over once again.
Manhattan defense lawyer Lindsay Kelly, Hope’s best friend and the one who found her after the accident, understands why Hope wants a new beginning. But she worries how her friend will fare in her new East Hampton home, far away from everything familiar. Lindsay’s worst fears are confirmed when she discovers Hope has vanished without a trace—the only lead a drop of blood found where she was last seen. Even more ominously, the blood matches a DNA sample with a connection to a notorious Kansas murderer.
With nowhere else to turn, Lindsay calls NYPD homicide detective Ellie Hatcher, the daughter of the cop who dedicated his life to hunting the Kansas killer. Ellie has always believed there was more to the story of her father’s death twenty years earlier—and she now fears that Hope’s recent disappearance could be related.
In pursuit of answers, three women search for the truth beneath long-buried secrets. And when their searches converge, what they find will upend everything they’ve ever known.
Hope’s real name is Tara King, and she’s from Wichita, Kansas. When she and Lindsay visited the Hamptons, Alex recognized her and panicked.
Ellie’s brother Jess knew who they both were. He told them that Alex and Hope used to date in high school. One night, the three of them and Jess’s girlfriend TC broke into a rich family’s house to party and do mushrooms. While they were high, Alex started freaking out and breaking things. A car drove up, Jess heard a shot, and then he and TC ran away.
The house belonged to Richard Mulaney, who had been grooming Alex’s sister. When Alex realized, he flew into a rage. After killing Mulaney, he convinced Hope to run away with him by telling her that she was the one to pull the trigger. She was blacked out when it happened, and she believed him. They stole a car in Indiana, and Alex was driving when they wrecked.
Steve had killed Ellie’s dad to cover up his involvement. He had known Mulaney was a pedophile and a rapist, and was taking payouts to look the other way. He was the one who killed Alex when Alex contacted him saying he had run into Hope.
The Twist:
Hope really was faking the amnesia. She had been another of Mulaney’s groomed girls. She faked amnesia because she believed she had killed Mulaney, until she realized she couldn’t have shot him. Her mother had abused her so badly that her wrist barely worked. One day, Lindsay’s dad took them to the shooting range. Hope could barely hold a much smaller gun than the one used to kill Mulaney, so she realized there was no way she could have shot him cleanly in the stomach while drunk and high.
The Ending:
Alex wrote a letter to Hope absolving her and Jess of any crime (written before he died, but was delivered to Hope at the end of the book). Hope knew some of the things he wrote weren’t true. She was working with a therapist to “get her memories back”.
My thoughts: I actually really liked that Hope was faking amnesia. It gave a fresh take to a common trope, even if we didn’t find out until the end.
Questions:
What was the purpose of Hope’s detailed journals if not to serve as a record in case she lost her memory again? Did she lie in her journals as well, or is this a miss? If she was honest Lindsay would’ve realized she was faking.
The Review:
I’m a fan of police procedurals, so I really enjoyed Find Me.
I had no idea until I marked this as “read” in Goodreads that this book is #6 in the Ellie Hatcher series. How did I read this whole book not knowing Ellie is a repeat character?? While she doesn’t play a huge part in the main plot, we learn some big things about her past. I’ve read some of Alafair’s backlog, but nothing earlier than 2016 which explains why I missed this. I’ve liked her writing more and more with each book I’ve read, so I’m definitely interested in checking out the earlier books in the series.
All that said, this book definitely functions as a standalone. My one related thought is that there were a lot of characters to keep track of. If one knew Ellie and her boyfriend and brother from past books, that’s three fewer characters to try to keep track of details for.
As always, Alafair brings a fascinating insight into legal procedure into her writing. Find Me was unique in that it read like a police procedural, but it was all from the POV of the lawyer. For the most part, the lawyer was the one doing the investigative work. The police saw Hope’s history and dismissed her as just having run away from home, perhaps for a second time. Once another body is found and the police begin to take an interest in Hope’s disappearance, they peg her as a person of interest.
There’s a lot to keep track of in this book: characters, hints, and twists add up to keep the reader on their toes. It definitely took my full concentration, and required a few false starts until I had the time to sit down and absorb all the information thrown at us in the first few chapters. I enjoyed the premise and the story, as well as the final twist. I expect that it may be a controversial ending among avid thriller readers, but I was a fan!
Readers of the Ellie Hatcher series will definitely want to pick this one up to find out something special about her backstory, and lovers of police procedurals will want to pick this one up to enjoy its standalone story. Find Me will be published on January 11, 2022.
QOTD: In Find Me, Hope journals as a safeguard against losing her memories again in the future. Do you journal? Would you ever let someone read them?
I do, although less frequently now that I’ve started Bookstagram. I do let people read most things with my supervision–I write most frequently about travel, so it’s fun to share those stories!
Follow me on Bloglovin’!
3 Comments
Comments are closed.