One woman’s reappearance throws her family into turmoil, exposing dark secrets and the hidden, often devastating truth of family relationships.
Kate Bennett vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago, leaving behind her husband and young daughter. When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult.
Kate’s return flips her family’s world upside down—her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn’t look or act like she did before.
While the family tries to help Kate reintegrate into society, they discover truths they’ve been hiding from each other about their own relationships. But they aren’t the only ones with secrets. As the family unravels what happened to Kate, a series of shocking revelations shows that Kate’s return is more sinister than any of them could have imagined.
About the Author:
Dr. Lucinda Berry is a former clinical psychologist and leading researcher in childhood trauma. Now, she spends her days writing full-time where she uses her clinical experience to blur the line between fiction and nonfiction. She enjoys taking her readers on a journey through the dark recesses of the human psyche.
If Berry isn’t chasing after her son, you can find her running through Los Angeles, prepping for her next marathon.
My Review:
I recently read The Perfect Child by Lucinda Riley and loved her style of writing so much I downloaded a couple of her previous books and When She Returned popped to the top of my TBR pile.
Loving mother and wife Kate disappears from a parking lot 11 years ago leaving a devastated husband, Scott and 5 year old daughter, Abbi. Fast-forward 11 years, Scott has remarried Meredith having met her at a grief support group and teenage Abbi is getting on with her life when Kate is found hundreds of miles away traumatised, beaten, tortured with a new born baby and returns to her family home scared and a shadow of her former self.
This book has several narrators, some believable and some completely unreliable which takes the reader on an interesting journey to find out what really happened to Kate all those years ago and the truth behind her marriage to Scott.
I will admit that the subject matter of “cults” is not one that I particularly enjoy and at times I wanted to slap Kate myself, especially as she was initially portrayed as an intelligent and professional journalist and a dedicated and committed mother and wife and therefore my “enjoyment” of this book was slightly tainted because of the subject matter. However When She Returned is a well-written and gripping psychological thriller.
