The Day I Died
By Lori Rader-Day
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (April 11, 2017)
Paperback: 432 pages
From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother's desperate search for a lost boy.
Anna Winger can know people better than they know themselves with only a glance—at their handwriting. Hired out by companies wanting to land trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real-life mess of other people at arm’s length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise on a note left behind at a murder scene in the small town she and her son have recently moved to, the crime gets under Anna’s skin and rips open her narrow life for all to see. To save her son—and herself—once and for all, Anna will face her every fear, her every mistake, and the past she thought she'd rewritten.
As soon as I read the first page I was hooked by its distinctive plot and intrigue yet, I must admit three-fourths of the way through it started to feel a bit drawn-out as the plot reveals itself slowly. Consequently, it dropped it from five stars to four nevertheless the story itself still held up chocked full of captivating twists plus endless thought-provoking situations. Subsequently, it raised many interesting questions regarding people in general that kept me thinking about after I finished the book. The author shows how first impressions are not as critical as we assume, but therefore do we ever unquestionably know someone? Comparatively, can a person completely change the core of their being? Finally, why do individuals learn to accept and live with physical and mental abuse? These are not new questions to anyone just presented to the reader in a different light, bringing them back to the front of your cognition.
I allowed an image to climb through the opening in my memory...When she came to mind, I stuffed her back down into the locked bin of my mind. A lot of people lived there, but wondering about Theresa only led to black thoughts and bad dreams. Theresa and my mother.
The main protagonist, Anna Winger has been on the run with her son Joshua for thirteen years when looking for a new place to dwell for a bit Anna is drawn to a one-horse town named Parks not realizing the forthcoming tribulation. Nevertheless, Anna still harbors strength and courage that lingers deep inside her granted is she able to accomplish for her the inconceivable? Furthermore, Anna’s past is revealed slowly to the reader in flashbacks. Before this book, I had never heard of a person having the ability to analyze handwriting or rather what is called Graphology which determines characteristics of a person. Though this makes a brilliant topic for a book scientists consider graphology pseudoscientific and ineffective. Whereas, how often do individuals write things out with pen and paper nowadays since texting and email have become such a large part of our life? Rarely.
I got up and grabbed the straps of Joshua’s backpack to move it off the table but instead pulled it to me...and wished I’d never looked. But I had, and now I knew. His handwriting-once so playfully dismissive of the horizon, so youthful and alive-was gone. His name even written by his own hand, was false. It was full of sticks, each letter strategically rendered and apart, lonely and stripped. I’d never seen anything so desolate, so perfectly engineered to give away nothing at all...Joshua was hiding in plain sight, too. And I was pretty sure he was hiding from me.As my final observance is this a story within a story or is it a possibility that all the mysteries that occur are entwined as one? Could it all have been an illusion? A four-star book is worth picking up and reading to find out.
🌲🌳🌲Tour Stops
April 12th: she treads softly
April 14th: Thoughts On This ‘n That
April 17th: StephTheBookworm
April 19th: Just Commonly
April 21st: G. Jacks Writes
April 24th: No More Grumpy Bookseller
April 26th: Art Books Coffee
April 27th: I Brought a Book
April 28th: Booked on a Feeling
May 2nd: Readaholic Zone
Wow, this sounds like quite a roller coaster of a read - I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteThanks for being a part of the tour.
I'm always intrigued by stories of how people who think they know someone can end up being so wrong. Just the excerpt of a mom seeing something troubling about her child got to me...
ReplyDeleteSounds intriguing!
ReplyDeleteThe title caught me right off. I really like the cover art work and the plot sounds like you will have plenty of twists and turns. Sounds really good.
ReplyDelete