Dear Child

Mysterious Book Report No. 423

by John Dwaine McKenna

A woman—who’s been kidnapped and held in a boarded-up hovel deep in some remote  woods, while being forced to act as a wife to a strange and brutal man and a mother to his two small children—manages to overcome her captor and escape . . . “But the end of her ordeal is only the beginning of her nightmare,” in a searing debut entitled, Dear Child, (Flatiron Books, $26.99, 349 pages, ISBN 978-1-250-76853-7) by author Romy Hausmann.  The novel, which is already a runaway best-seller in Europe, has just been translated and published in English, and what a wrenching tale it is.

Told in three first person points-of-view by: a young girl, whose entire life has been spent living in the windowless, dank and cramped cabin . . . the abducted woman, who’s been trying to stay alive and escape from the monster who’s abusing her mentally, physically, and sexually . . . and the missing woman’s elderly father, who’s losing his mind from rage, grief and the strain of a thirteen year quest to find his beloved daughter.

As each narrator speaks, small details are revealed on every page, which tell the story drop by drop by drop—but as each new clue appears—so do new plot twists that show how the narrator has held something out, some character detail, or flaw, which then points the reader in an altogether new direction.  Therefore, as each new AHA! moment comes to the reader, so does another different revelation, which makes Dear Child one of the most compelling, engaging page-turning psychological thrillers to cross the MBR’s desk this year.  It will keep readers enthralled and riveted to the end!

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