​Synopsis from goodreads.com​

   "There are some things you can’t leave behind…

A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down."

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 If you found the link to this review from my recommendations page, you may already know that I found this novel completely at random. For those of you who found this page from somewhere else, here is the story: I was bored one night and wanted to get out of the house for a bit so I went to my favourite place - the local bookstore, naturally. When I got there, I stumbled around for a while, trying to find a book. Having read most, if not all, of the top sellers right now, I moved through the shelves until this book cover caught my eye. Just from a quick glance at the cover, I realized pretty quickly that it was like something I've never read before so intruiged I bought it. At home, I started at my bookshelf that contains all my 'To Read This Summer' books, but ultiamtely decided that I just wanted to try reading this one instead. As per usual, I sat down, turned on my light, and dived right into the book.

 

From the end of the fifth page, I was hooked. Never having actually read a book like this, with maybe the exception of 'Room' by Emma Donoghue, which even that is quite different, I was hooked. The girl I was reading about, two years younger than me, was going through things I couldn't even begin to imagine, nevermind want to imagine. She had lived most of her life, hidden away from society in an abonadoned and beat up camper, with no one to talk to besides her younger sister, who refused to talk to anyone but her, and her mother, a heavy drug addict, who all but left them to die more times than once. However, the hell the main character, Carey, and her younger sister, Janessa, have been living doesn't last forever as a man, who is a stranger to everything but Carey's most distant memories of the past and a social worker show up to their isolated 'home', telling them that their mother is gone and never returning and that they, the two children who don't know a life outside of their camper, are being brought to the surface of the real world. Believe it or not, you learn all of this in less than the first ten pages. 

 

Now I'm not going to go into any more detail of the actual plot than that, but I will say one thing. From the first chapter of the book, I was certain that I had the end figured out. I thought I was being pretty clever, all Sherlock like, and had discovered the mystery that most of the characer's themselves were trying to figure out, but that changed pretty quickly. After ideas were being dispelled constantly, I gave up on trying to guess and just allowed myself to be completely drawn in and before I knew it, heavy twists were being flung at me, out of nowhere and I just couldn't put the book down. As I said on the recommendation page, I even got in trouble from some of my best friends for sneaking this book along with me, to a sleepover, but I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. This book, just had been that captured by it's mysteries. 

 

If you're on the hunt for a book that you want to be purely escapist, this is NOT the book for you. This book brings forward so many different questions and even though it's only 264 pages, offers so many twists and deep thought provoking scenes. With this book, you can't help but feel sympathy for dear Carey, who want's anything but pity. It's hard to explain how exactly this book affected me to anyone who hasn't read it, but it's certainley a worth while read.

 

All of the characters are so complex and are as far away from being stock characters as you can imagine. From Carey with the cold surface, to Janessa who still mangages to hold that childhood innocence even after everything she's been to, to Carey's father who you can't help wonder about, this story is amazing. 

 

Emily Murdoch is a seriously underated author, who I personally believe deserves so much more credit than she has been given. With the dark themes this novel beholds, not every author can make you go from fearing for a character, to laughing with them, to crying alongside them, within only a few pages. 

 

I rate this novel a sturdy 4.25 out of 5. While I praise it very highly, there were several loose ends that I wish were tied up, but were seemingly left unanswered in such a way, the plot didn't really benefit from them. For exmaple, I know some novels end off with this being unanswered for a plot twist, but some of the unresolved things in this novel just seemed left out there, for no exact reason. However, this should not deteere you from reading this novel in anyway shape or form, because it was still an amazing novel that I truly and highly recommend.

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If You Find Me 
Author: Emily Murdoch

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

Goodreads Rating: 4.05

Series & Book #: If You Find Me (stand alone)
Genre(s): Young Adult, Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery, Psychogical Thriller, Romance, Drama, Survival, Abuse
Edition: Paperback, North American 
Pages: 264
Published In: 2013
Publishing Company: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1250021529

 



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