After Anna

After Anna by Alex Lake was a Sunday Times bestseller in Britain last year. I picked it up based on the publisher's description: "A bone-chilling psychological thriller that will suit fans of Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, Daughter, by Jane Shemilt, and The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins."

Julia is running late to pick up her five year old daughter Anna from school - and her phone is dead. She hopes the school will understand - again. But when she finally arrives......Anna is not there. She's vanished without a trace.

The first half of the book details the search for Anna and the guilt and blame Julia is subjected to - by herself, the public, her husband Brian and his mother Edna. The actual police investigation is a bit thin - the show more focus seems to be on the three main characters and their dysfunctional relationships. Despite what has happened, I found it hard to like Julia and empathize with her. She's mercurial, all over the map with what she wants from life, from her marriage and belatedly - from motherhood. There's no question about Brian and his mother however. Edna is quite opinionated and Brian is happy to agree with her. Negative social media coverage provides a realistic look at how the media influences opinions and public judgement.

Cut into the narrative are the kidnapper's thoughts...."It was easier than you had expected. The girl came without complaint. You spotted her as she left the school, alone, looking around, clearly bereft of a parent to pick her up. Who would do that? Who would be so negligent as to leave a five-year-old in so vulnerable a position? It was appalling, it really was. But it was good for you."

This is not a spoiler - it figures prominently into the publisher's description. In part two Anna is returned unharmed. Where was she? Why was she taken? And why is the kidnapper still interested in this family? I think this plot turn would have been better if the reader could have discovered it themselves, rather than having it already laid out. It certainly detracted from the search for Anna in part one as we know she is going to be found.

There is a paucity of suspects and I found the whodunit fairly easy to suss out, despite the large red herring in the room. After Anna didn't quite live up to the comparison to Gone Girl, but I found the book entertaining for a lazy day's reading. show less

I found this book absolutely riveting. Life kept me too busy to read it often, but I found myself constantly thinking about it and when it was in my hands, I did not want to put it down.

It was slightly slow towards the beginning, but not so much as to be dull. Alex Lake points a riveting and emotional picture of what Julia Crowne is feeling every moment of every day during the period her child is missing and the days after she returns. The climatic scene came with several surprises I did not anticipate, which I always enjoy. I probably read the last 100 pages in under an hour. All in all, a wonderful read and definitely recommend it.

This was an interesting premise for a book as it offered an alternative to the standard child abduction plot. In this scenario, a child is taken, sedated, but cared for and returned after a week. The reason for this becomes clear as with this book the intended target is not Anna as we are told by the unidentified abductor whose voice is heard in short commentary chapters as the plot develops.

From the beginning I was intrigued by the plot as it was something that everyone could identify with. How often have we been late to meet someone because life got in the way, lost keys, a traffic jam or in Julia's case a meeting that over ran and a failure to contact the school because her mobile wasn't charged. Unfortunately for Julia the show more consequences were catastrophic in more ways than one. Not only was her daughter missing but over the course of the book, even after Anna was returned she was subject to a carefully manipulated process of character assassination. The initial sympathy for her was manipulated to present the picture of an uncaring, selfish and flawed character. I found this aspect of the book very interesting as it represents the contemporary trial by social and printed media that is an increasing aspect of modern life. As we should all be aware but seem to forget #don'tbelieveallyoureadinthepapers.

Despite the fact I had my suspicions quite early on, as to who was responsible I was still keen to find out why and also to discover whether they were brought to justice. I was also keen to see how the failed relationship between Julia and her husband played out against the backdrop of Anna's abduction and return. However at the point that Julia herself discovered who was responsible my interest started to flag. I thought that the following action was melodramatic and implausible. This is difficult to define without providing spoilers, but it weakened the plot for me, and the final chapters felt rushed and offered an unsatisfactory ending. This was a shame as up to that point I was completely engaged. This is not a bad book but for me the bone-chilling psychological thriller of the blurb fizzled out and fell flat.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in return for an honest review show less

A parents' worst nightmare....four little words: "Your Child Is Missing."

Anna disappeared ​without a trace ​a​s ​school was being let out ​for the day.

​Anna's mother, Julia, was late picking her up and blamed herself. She and other family members were hoping that another family member had picked her up. Well....someone did pick her up, but they never brought her home.

Anna was missing for a week, and then surprisingly returned. Very strange in a kidnapping case, but she was safe and unharmed. But was she and were other family members really safe in such an odd turn of events?

AFTER ANNA had me on the edge of my seat as the kidnapper narrated what was happening and as we flashed back to the ongoing police investigation and show more daily lives of the characters.

AFTER ANNA is a must read for anyone who loves thrillers, chilling situations, a unique story line, and an evil, manipulating villain.

Mr. Lake did a marvelous job of keeping me guessing even though a few folks said they guessed right away who the kidnapper was.

I would consider this one of the top thrillers I have read this year. As I neared the end, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough to see the outcome.

ENJOY if you read AFTER ANNA. 5/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation in return for an honest review. show less

Can you imagine a greater nightmare happen to a parent than losing their own child? I most certainly can't imagine, and I am not a parent yet. But if I were a parent, I would do anything in my power to get my child back to safety of my own arms, far away from the dangers that creep outside on the streets and are at some cases closer to us than we think. However, in this book, the fun does not begin when Anna gets kidnapped from her mother's arms, but when Anna gets returned back into her mother's arms. Suddenly everyone is suspect of the kidnapping, and it eventually turns out that the kidnapper is a lot closer that Anna's mother may think. The book was quite tense and it offered quite a lot of twists and turns, and let's just say that show more the ending was completely unpredictable. show less

Enjoyable. I guessed early on who most likely was the kidnapper, but it was still fun to get to the answer. I know there have been comments from people not liking the way the kidnapper speaks in 3rd person, but I found it to be an interesting difference.

Although it was easy enough to figure out who did it by the middle of the book, it was an enjoyable, easy read.