{ The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal - TLC Book Tour }

 

About The Lost Ones

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (July 25, 2017)

Recommended for summer reading by TIME magazine

"A brave, unflinching heroine and brave, unflinching writing add up to an extraordinary debut--highly recommended."--Lee Child

A dark, compulsively readable psychological suspense debut, the first in a new series featuring the brilliant, fearless, chaotic, and deeply flawed Nora Watts—a character as heartbreakingly troubled, emotionally complex, and irresistibly compelling as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole.

It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen years—since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren’t looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope.

A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what happens to vulnerable girls on the streets. Caring despite herself, she sets out to find Bonnie with her only companion, her mutt Whisper, knowing she risks reopening wounds that have never really healed—and plunging into the darkness with little to protect her but her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

The search uncovers a puzzling conspiracy that leads Nora on a harrowing journey of deception and violence, from the gloomy rain-soaked streets of Vancouver, to the icy white mountains of the Canadian interior, to the beautiful and dangerous island where she will face her most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.

Purchase Links

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About Sheena Kamal

Sheena Kamal holds an HBA in political science from the University of Toronto, and was awarded a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness. Kamal has also worked as a crime and investigative journalism researcher for the film and television industry—academic knowledge and experience that inspired this debut novel. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Find out more about Kamal at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

My Thoughts:

This is Sheena Kamal's debut in the book world and boy what a punch it packs.   I will say that it started off a little slow for me but I stuck with it and quickly became caught up in Nora's life.

The main character is Nora, and 15 years earlier she gave her baby up for adoption.  One day, out of the blue, she gets a phone call that brings all those memories back to the present, in a flurry of emotions.  Her 15 year old daughter is missing, and her adoptive parents are reaching out to Nora as a last resort.

What ensues is a world of twists and turns, a thrilled that will have you on the edge of your seat and wondering what the hell is going on.  And just when you think you might have it figured out, a huge twist comes along that will leave you speechless.

I've read thrillers before, I've gone through the journey and usually can figure out what is going on before the book ends, but never have I had one that left me this shocked.

Nora has been trying for 15 years to hide her past, to forget about what she went through and what she had to do, but when faced with the disappearance of her daughter, she has to make the choice to either walk away completely, or immerse herself in the investigation and hopefully find the girl she gave up, knowing full well that it will mean revisiting things she would rather not remember.

Great summer read, I think anyone who enjoys a good thriller will love this book.