It was a privilege to receive this review copy from Library Thing's Early Reviewers. There is a lot that happens in this novel, and each of the four-hundred pages are well worth reading. In the midst of mystery and intrigue, John Hart never loses sight of what is most important: the characters.



Johnny is a very real boy with concerns far beyond his age. His sister disappeared a year before the book begins and he has spent considerable time searching for her as the rest of his family fell apart. When another girl goes missing, a chain of events is set into motion revealing more and more how “darkness is a cancer of the human heart,” to quote one of the minor characters. In the last quarter of the book I sincerely began to wonder how things could ever turn out right for the people I had begun to care so much about. Although Johnny's mother and Detective Hunt begin as stereotypes, they had fully emerged as unique characters by then. In a way, this is true of the whole book: it gets better and better. There is no pretending that Johnny's life is perfect and all the traumatizing issues are resolved, but at the end there is hope and some semblance of resolution based on his actions. The last couple of chapters left me smiling. If you can handle heartbreak, and want to experience the healing, then read this book.