Have You Seen Her by Catherine McKenzie

Dark secrets prevail in this awe dropping thriller with shocking twists and an incredible ending. Although a challenging read due to one of the main plots being domestic abuse, it also depicts how women, desperate to leave an abusive relationship feel hopeless, afraid to leave, who live in fear each day and will do just about anything if they can find a way out and survive. Even then, they are always looking to see if they are going to get caught.

Cassie Peters is on the move. She has left her life in New York and has hopefully erased herself so she will never be found. She is running from the one person she truly loved, but now is perilously afraid of, her husband.

She returns to her hometown of Mammoth Lakes in California where she had previously worked as a search and rescue team member at Yosemite years ago. She desperately needs a job even though the reason she had left the position years ago was because of a tragic search and rescue where someone died.

All she wants to do is blend in under her maiden name, forget what she has been through and think about what her next steps should be to hide forever. A daunting task.

But of course, things don’t go as she planned. When a couple, Jada and Jim post footage of a bear taking food from them chaos ensues at the park and this opens her up to a risk of being seen on social media.

She then meets a woman named Petal and her partner Sandy. Petal is keeping a diary because she would like to write a book someday about their adventures in camping. Petal, it seems has become a bit obsessed with the couple who posted the footage, Jada and Jim. She has a feeling Jim may be abusing Jada as when she first met Jada, she found her crying because she and Jim had a horrible argument.

Suddenly the couple goes missing while on a hike. Which is the same thing that happened all those years ago. As the search and rescue try to find them and the park becomes a circus of media attention, Petal disappears as well. Then a dead body is found, and Cassie’s world is thrown into turmoil. She becomes the prime suspect in the death. Just how did it all come to this? How will she survive? Just what happened to the missing campers?

Have You Seen Her is so captivating and surprising and gripping in so many ways. Because the reader becomes quite invested in the characters and their stories and backstories the shocking outcome will astonish them.

Thank you #NetGalley #AtriaBooks #CatherineMcKenzie #HaveYouSeenHer for the advanced copy.