Cemetery Girl
David Bell

NAL Trade
October 4th, 2011 / ISBN: 978- 0451234674
Suspsense

Reviewed by Susan Johnson

Your twelve-year-old daughter walks out the door with the family dog on the way to the local park. Several hours later the dog returns but your child does not. How would this affect you and your family? What would you do to get her back? Could your marriage survive the trauma?

Four years ago Tom and Abbey Stuart were living the American dream. They had a nice home, good jobs and a sweet daughter. All that changed in a heartbeat when their daughter Caitlin took the family dog for a walk and simply did not return.

Each parent handles the disappearance differently. Tom never gives up, always looking for his daughter and trying to keep the police involved. Abbey eventually turns to her church and later decides to have a memorial so she can move on.

Before the memorial an unlikely witness comes forward. She claims to have seen Caitlin with a much older man in a seedy strip joint where the witness is a dancer. Tom wants to look once more and Abbey has just given up.

When Caitlin is found they discover she is a very different child with a hateful demeanor and no wish to talk about where she was or with whom. Not knowing what she has been through her parents struggle to deal with her while her father is determined to find the truth.

Cemetery Girl is a very suspenseful book mostly told in the viewpoint of the father. The loss of his child has taken hold of his whole identity. It’s well written and almost impossible to put down. When I was not reading it I was imagining what was to come.

Reviews of other titles by this author

Cemetery Girl
The Forgotten Girl