Review: I Found You by Lisa Jewell

I Found You by Lisa Jewell
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication date: April 25th 2017
My rating: 4 Stars
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A young bride, a lonely single mother, and an amnesiac man of dubious origin lie at the heart of New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell’s next suspenseful drama that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Paula Hawkins.

In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.

Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. Their annual trip to the quaint seaside town is passing by uneventfully, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just that he’s playing the role of protective older brother.

Two decades of secrets, a missing husband, and a man with no memory are at the heart of this brilliant new novel, filled with the “beautiful writing, believable characters, pacey narrative, and dark secrets” (London Daily Mail) that make Lisa Jewell so beloved by audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. 

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed I Found You! A mystery that kept me glued to the pages with tension that intensified with each chapter. 

You’re basically just thrown into the story when Alice, mother of three discovers a man outside her seaside cottage with no memory. Alice can’t help herself, and offers him a place to stay all the while they try and piece together the mystery of his life.  “Frank” as Alice begins to call him starts having flashes of memory, jogged by places in Alice’s town, and soon it becomes apparent that something terrible happened. 

We also have alternating chapters of a twenty-one year old new bride, Lily.  After three weeks of wedded bliss and passion, her new husband fails to come home and she’s alone in a foreign country. And chapters from the past, 1993, centered on a family vacationing on the beach.  At first I was wondering how these three POVs connected, but with every page I got a little more light shed on the situation.  I could sense a tragedy coming, impending doom and I wanted to know how it all turned out!

I was pleasantly surprised by how addictive and interesting I Found You was!  I think it’s best to say as little as possible with a mystery, but as someone who has read loads of mystery books I was pleased with the reveal, even though I had guessed at a lot of it, it didn’t spoil my enjoyment.  I wanted to know the particulars, and how it all turned out in the end.  There was some romance, just enough to satisfy this romance junkie here. I’ll be keeping an eye out for any other Lisa Jewell books now.

I used the UK cover for my review because I like it better, but this was supposed to be the US cover. :)

 

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