She becomes aware of the silence at the other end of the line. A prickling sensation crawls up her arms. Her heart speeds up. ‘Found who?’ she asks, slowly, carefully, deliberately.
‘They found Daniel.’
Six years ago
Megan waits at the school gates for her six-year-old son, Daniel. As the playground empties, panic bubbles inside her. Daniel is nowhere to be found. Her darling son is missing.
Six years later
After years of sleepless nights and endless days of missing her son, Megan finally gets the call she has been dreaming about. Daniel has walked into a police station in a remote town just a few miles away.
Megan is overjoyed – her son is finally coming home. She has kept Daniel’s room, with his Cookie Monster poster on the wall and a stack of Lego under the bed, in perfect shape to welcome him back. But when he returns, there is something different about Daniel…
According to the police, Daniel was kidnapped by his father. After his dad died in a fire, Daniel was finally able to escape. Desperate to find out the truth, Megan tries to talk to her little boy – but he barely answers her questions. Longing to help him heal, Megan tries everything – his favourite chocolate milkshake, a reunion with his best friend, a present for every birthday missed – but still, Daniel is distant.
And as they struggle to connect, Megan begins to suspect that there is more to the story. Soon, she fears that her son is hiding a secret. A secret that could destroy her family…
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Review
When your child disappears, the world collapses around you. Sometimes you can only guess who has taken them and you fear the worst. What will they go through? Will they get hurt? Or even worse? I really cannot imagine what I would do. I don’t know whether I would be able to cope and move on.
In this book the kidnapper is your child’s father. Maybe it’s different because you know your baby will be loved. He is with is dad after all. Unfortunately not every daddy is loving and caring. Not every daddy is even capable of loving and caring. If they would be, they would not have acted like this, would they?
You know your ex-husband does not love you and maybe never has, but you hope and pray he will treat his son better.
Every day you keep hoping for good news, a lead, but six long, painful years go by with not the slightest clue about where they could be. Until, finally one day, the call you have been waiting for comes through. Your boy is safe and sound. You cannot wait to take him in your arms and smother him with love. The love that has been accumulated for all those years and cannot wait to come to the surface.
Dreams do come true, but dreams can be shattered as quickly. Daniel is back, but where is Daniel? Megan does not recognise her son at all. What has happened to him?
Although they are reunited, they are not a family just yet. Time will tell and little by little Megan will uncover the truth.
You feel Daniel is hiding something, but I did not know what it was. There were different scenarios going through my mind, but not the correct one. 😉 I did see through something, but a lot did not click in to place at all.
How can someone treat the people they say they adore this way? Control is the key word here.
I loved this book. I could not put it away and read it in one sitting. The author created the perfect characters for this book. There is only one thing left to do and that’s rating the story. I don’t have to think long nor hard about that. 5 stars is the only correct one in my opinion.
Thank you
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About the author
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because-as her professor pointed out- ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’ She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree in Children’s Literature.
The idea for her first published novel, The Boy under the Table, was so scary that it took a year for her to find the courage to write the emotional story. She went on to publish a further five novels in Australia before joining Bookouture in 2019. She is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller in the USA, UK, AUS and CAN.
She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.
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Author Links
https://www.facebook.com/NicoleTrope/
https://twitter.com/nicoletrope
https://www.instagram.com/nicoletropeauthor/
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Book Link
B for Bookreview 