THREE DAYS MISSING
by Kimberley Belle
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: the call that comes in the middle of the night.
When Kat Jenkins awakens to the police on her doorstep, her greatest fear is realized. Her nine-year-old son, Ethan, is missing—vanished from the cabin where he’d been on an overnight field trip with his class. Shocked and distraught, Kat rushes to the campground where he was last seen. But she’s too late; the authorities have returned from their search empty-handed after losing Ethan’s trail in the mountain forest.
Another mother from the school, Stef Huntington, seems like she has it all: money, prominence in the community, a popular son and a loving husband. She hardly knows Kat, except for the vicious gossip that swirls around Kat’s traumatic past. But as the police investigation unfolds, Ethan’s disappearance will have earth-shattering consequences in Stef’s own life—and the paths of these two mothers are about to cross in ways no one could have anticipated.
Racing against the clock, their desperate search for answers begins—one where the greatest danger could lie behind the everyday smiles of those they trust the most.
[ Synopsis from GoodReads ]
The novel starts off as a slow read – a lot of details. But the young boy, in grade two, on an overnight school camping trip is noted missing right from the beginning. How can he just have disappeared? Didn’t anybody see anything? Anyone? As the hours turn into days the questions hover: kidnapping or is he resting somewhere as a body? As the plot evolves and develops, the reader becomes increasing more engaged with the story. You want to know what happened and you are gripped by the action and its related investigation to the end.
Throughout, the story alternates between two polarities: rich family and working-class family; school bully and the victim.
The author captivates the reader; relentlessly develops a sense of fear and agony of the parents — all because of human greed.
In the end, understandably, a young parent, with young children reading this book, will become even more paranoid about letting a young child out of their sight.
Nadia G.
