Book: The Return of Ellie Black
Author: Emiko Jean
Pages: ~320
Read on: Kindle
Read in: ~4 hours
Plot Summary: It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.
Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.
But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.
The debut thriller from New York Times bestselling author Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black is both a feminist tour de force about the embers of hope that burn in the aftermath of tragedy and a twisty page-turner that will shock and surprise you right up until the final page.
Things I Liked:
1. The premise was so interesting, especially, because it featured a protagonist who came back home after being kidnapped and held for almost two years and also, because the chief investigating detective had a dead teenaged sister and a very personal motivation to seek justice for teenage girls taken by predatory men. The book promised to be interesting and boy! did it ever deliver!
2. The book is paced just right. It is not so fast-paced that there is no plot or character development and neither it is so slow that you feel like skipping chapters. Every incident, flashback, story is there in the book by design and it helps us understand the characters, their world and the helps build a nuanced context around the story. Love it when crime thrillers strike the right balance between character development and a fast-paced, thrilling plot!
3. The characters themselves were so interesting.
First, we have Chelsey- the detective. She is a Japanese girl adopted by Caucasian parents, who was often made to feel othered in her small town in Washington state. She has the gaping wound of her sister's death- the sister she was very close to- because she carried the guilt of knowing that her sister snuck off in the night to meet a boy she'd been hooking up with. Chelsey is obsessed with her job, like her father was, to the detriment of her marriage. She is single-mindedly focused on finding who Ellie's kidnapper was and where she was being held. Chelsey's personal growth and her journey to overcome her past demons was very gratifying. I was rooting for her.
Then we have Ellie, our victim turned survivor. Ellie is not easy to like at all. The 'before' Ellie was a rebel, a brat, a troublemaker. She sold weed to make money while still in high school, stole her older sister's id to rent motel rooms and buy booze. She was, in many ways, a perfect victim because of her risky behaviour. The 'after' Ellie annoyed the heck out of me because everyone (Chelsey, Ellie's shrink, the reader) knew she is hiding something and it was annoying to watch her deflect and not cooperate with the investigation. However, Ellie does redeem herself eventually and it is bittersweet to see her attempt to piece herself back together.
There are also the other girls who were held with Ellie. I don't want to get too much into them because that would be a major spoiler but even getting to see their experiences and the horrors of it added to understanding Ellie and other characters' motivations.
4. Nice amount of red herrings and two major twists! One that made me sit up in bed in the middle of the night and run to my sister's room to discuss! (We were buddy-reading the book *grin*) So, safe to say, the book is not predictable at all!
Rating: 5/5
This is a great thriller. Go read!
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