What a great read! A.J. Thoroughly enjoyed from cover to cover! I loved how the plot unfolded and the characters were so well-developed. Can't wait for your next book!

A book that grabs you and doesn't let go. A great villain and maybe another one. Or maybe not...or maybe... This is the author's first "psychological" mystery and I am looking forward to more. Also loved the setting, easy to visualize as the action progressed.

This is an amazing book that captivated my curiosity and interest right from the start! I could hardly put it down and read it in two days! Highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good mystery and thriller book. I am enjoying this authors books a lot and have been binging them all! This is a five star read, you won’t be disappointed!

Broken and grieving the tragic loss of her daughter, Julie can't get past the accident of three years ago. Hoping for peace and healing, she rents a cabin on a small lake where she returns to the water and kayaking, a previous source of joy. One morning, she spies a boy on a dock. The fearful look on his face as he flees sets in motion a compelling chain of events that lead Julie, her neighbor, her ex, and the reader to wonder if the boy was real or a figment of her imagination. From the opening page, I was hooked by this psychological thriller, rife with foreboding, complex characters, and vivid detail.

Three years after the drowning death of her daughter, Abby, Julie goes to a lake to get space and heal. When she sees a young boy on a dock she panics he’s going to drown, but before she can help him he disappears. Obsessed with him triggering the loss of her daughter she sets out to contact and inform his parents he’s in a dangerous place being alone on the dock. This sets off a cascade of cat and mouse involving neighbor Mark, an architect who starts out helpful then throws her info confusion, same with Peller another neighbor who lost a son, but when chasing down clues and finding physical evidence dead ends, she wonders if she imagined the boy. Her ex, Keith, and brother phone questioning if her actions are grief related causing her to wonder if she’s losing her mind. Right along with her rollercoastering between self-doubt and confidence the boy is real, the reader has no clue—the plot thick with mystery right down to the surprising ending. The brilliance in this author’s writing is her ability to astutely keep the reader guessing right along with the protagonist. As she meets with hostility, accidents, and assumptions if only she’d take her medication she’d lose the fixations on the boy on the dock, I’m battling along with her as to her sanity, or not. This is a gut-wrenching, emotional read, where tension screams from the pages as reality comes into perspective. Beyond the last page, this story hauntingly lingers, the excellent writing and scene depiction, the doubt woven into every twist and turn appropriate to the story, and the graphic descriptions.

Kept me in a tight grip! I was never quite sure what's going on. Will be perusing her other books.

But the author didn't develop the relationships. Rather than letting the story show the development, she just explained everything. If the characters were in high school (immature), it might explain some of the impulsivity, but they were supposedly adults. It became tedious as Julie jumped back and forth, going on and on about how she just knew there was a child. Let the story SHOW it. Stop explaining it all to the reader.

Great book that was just awarded the Maxi award!