The Book:
Finding Tessa by Jaime Lynn Hendricks, 2021
The Characters:
Jace and his wife Tessa
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
Jace and Tessa appear to be a young couple in love with nothing to hide. But looks can be deceiving.
When Jace Montgomery comes home late from entertaining clients, he discovers that his wife Tessa is missing. There’s broken glass at the back door. Clumps of her hair. Blood. The cops in their small New Jersey town have him pegged as a suspect, especially after he explodes at a reporter during a press conference. Jace maintains his innocence despite the mounting evidence against him, but when a coworker he’s accused of having an affair with also disappears and a search warrant turns up an illegal gun in Jace’s home, all signs point to him as the culprit. What is he really hiding?
Meanwhile, Tessa finally feels safe, having set up her husband to take the fall for her disappearance—and someone close to him is helping her put him away. Breaking her lifelong pattern of bad men is only one hurdle she has to overcome. The other is outrunning her secret past while trying to stay alive, especially when those in her new life aren’t who they appear to be.
Jace’s lies don’t add up and the authorities are closing in. Will Tessa’s old life catch up to her and drag her back to a life of abuse before justice is served?
The Twist:
The timelines are split! Tessa’s starts before she meets Jace and leads up to the day she disappears, while Jace’s starts when Tessa disappears. She hasn’t run away from him like you’re led to believe in the beginning.
Tessa was on the run from her ex, Drew, when she met Jace. She had gone home with Jace’s roommate, and Jace walked in on the roommate trying to rape her. Tessa had been using Maribel to set Drew up for her disappearance, but when she met Jace she cut off contact with Maribel.
Maribel was the one who kidnapped Tessa. She turned on her and began working with Drew to find her–and Drew turned out to be Andy, the man trying to get financing through Jace’s bank. Maribel shot Tessa, but then Tessa told her she was pregnant and she couldn’t go through with killing her. She called Drew, who kept Tessa captive and was hoping to raise the baby together.
The Ending:
Tessa had magically recorded everything the day Maribel kidnapped her, and Jace happened to find it all in the cloud. He and the cops rescued Tessa just as she was trying to escape. The recording got him acquitted and put Maribel in jail. Maribel had also killed Rosita because she slept with Andy.
The Review:
I’ve read some amazing debut thrillers from Scarlet Suspense, and this one is no exception. I buddy read it with my two sisters, which was a lot of fun. I’m not often able to talk about books as I go, but I really enjoy it when I can!
Finding Tessa was a quick, twisty, and engaging read. This is why domestic suspense is my favorite genre! I was eager to figure out what really happened to Tessa and whether Jace had anything to do with her disappearance. Both narrators were unreliable, and I didn’t know who to blame!
With short chapters ending in gripping cliffhangers, I couldn’t put this one down (although I had to at our stopping points, because buddy read!). The suspense is real, and the mind games between the characters make for an entertaining read.
This book does require some suspension of belief, and there were a few things that didn’t quite add up. Tessa says that her ex before Jace was nice for the first year before turning abusive, and yet she marries Jace within two weeks of knowing him? That’s not long enough to tell whether someone is a good person or not. Tessa needs therapy, not another husband! And Jace married her without knowing a single thing about her background, which also doesn’t sound smart or safe.
Overall, an enjoyable, quick read with some interesting twists. I’ve definitely become a fan of Jaime Lynn Hendricks, and can’t wait to see what she does next!
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