Lost You

Author: Haylen Beck
Genre: Suspense
Type: e-book
Source: NetGalley
Publisher: Crown
First Published: August 6, 2019
Opening Lines: "She climbs up on to the low wall that borders the roof, even as the police officers yell at her to stop."

Book Description from GoodReads: A provocative and unputdownable psychological suspense about two women locked in a desperate fight over a child each believes is rightfully hers

Libby needs a break. Three years ago her husband split, leaving her to raise their infant son Ethan alone as she struggled to launch her writing career. Now for the first time in years, things are looking up. She's just sold her first novel, and she and Ethan are going on a much-needed vacation. Everything seems to be going their way, so why can't she stop looking over her shoulder or panicking every time Ethan wanders out of view? Is it because of what happened when Ethan was born? Except Libby's never told anyone the full story of what happened, and there's no way anyone could find her and Ethan at a faraway resort . . . right? 

But three days into their vacation, Libby's fears prove justified. In a moment of inattention, Ethan wanders into an elevator before Libby can reach him. When the elevator stops and the doors open, Ethan is gone. Hotel security scours the building and finds no trace of him, but when CCTV footage is found of an adult finding the child wandering alone and leading him away by the hand, the police are called in. The search intensifies, a lost child case turning into a possible abduction. Hours later, a child is seen with a woman stepping through an emergency exit. Libby and the police track the woman down and corner her, but she refuses to release Ethan. Asked who she is, the woman replies:

"I'm his mother."

What follows is one of the most shocking, twist-y, and provocative works of psychological suspense ever written. A story of stolen identity, of surrogacy gone horribly wrong, and of two women whose insistence that each is the "real" mother puts them at deadly cross-purposes, Lost You is sure to be one of 2019's most buzzed-about novels.

My Rating: 3 stars

My Review: This story starts out with what appears to be the case of a missing child but soon backtracks into a story that deals with the toll illegal surrogacy has on two women who become increasingly desperate and unstable in their desire for one child. 

Once the story goes back in time, we lose the suspense and the story takes on a contemporary fiction feel. Not a bad thing, but not what I was hoping for because the story lost a lot of steam at this point. It didn't help that I didn't like or sympathize with either of these woman (but I did feel for little Ethan who didn't appear to have the best outcome either way). 

The suspense picks up again at the end, but it is short lived as the twist is revealed leaving readers with an ending that is tied up too quickly but feels too contrived to be believable. Overall, this was a decent read but I missed the intense thrill that Beck's previous book Here and Gone held for me last year. 

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Crown for providing me with a complimentary digital copy of this book, via NetGally, in exchange for my honest review.