"When She Returned" Review

When She Returned by Lucinda Berry

Pages: 287 Genre: thriller, mystery

Rating: 2 Stars

Kindle Highlights

Kate Bennett, a respected investigative journalist living the dream with her husband and child, vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago. Scott and Abbi, her husband and daughter, have had to rebuild their lives without Kate. At first, it was surviving investigations and accusations. More recently, Scott married Meredith, and Kate was declared dead. Then, one day, Kate shows up at a gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help. The FBI thinks that she's been with a cult this whole time. As the family tries to cope with their new chaos, secrets begin to come forward from everyone, showing that there's more to Kate's return than meets the eye.

This book was reminding me of a lot of other things — primarily The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson and one character was reminding me of Eddison from The Butterfly Garden — which helped give me momentum to finish. Unfortunately, every book that was called to mind by this one is better. And by the end it was just a letdown.

No characters behaved in a way that either made sense or was appropriate for intelligent adults. Meredith and Abbi both have sections from their points of view in the current timeline, and both were driving me crazy in different ways. Meredith was trying to "what about ME" her way through this entire tragedy. She's acting surprised that The Guy Who Loves His Missing Wife A Lot might have complex feelings about his wife being back from the dead. So, when she starts pointing out valid concerns, it just makes her look whiny. On the other hand, Abbi is a 16-year-old who I thought was roughly 12 (I know it does the math for me early but I read it wrong) until literally 67% of the way through. Both her narration and behavior are so young, and I understand that she's still a child/dealing with a lot of trauma, but she does not seem to approach the situation as someone who is almost 18. She does things that someone 5 years younger than her might genuinely believe to be a smart idea, but, unfortunately, a 16-year-old just can't get away with.

Scott doesn't have a point of view, and I'm grateful for it. Honestly, it's hard to put my finger on what his problem was. I think his only real character trait was "pathetically in love with Kate," which is different than a man loving and being devoted to his wife. He was too blindly supportive of returned-Kate (to a point of disregarding logic and reason) without real justification for it. I get that he loves her, but he's also an adult man who has been raising a child and working in the real world for 11 years. He needed to be more of something.

Which brings me to Kate. She gets a POV, but it's from "Then," which shows us her experience over time with the cult (that's not a spoiler, it's in the description). Unfortunately, these sections are written really poorly. The biggest issue is that there are big jumps between them, which means we miss a lot of context. Why does she start to fall for the cult's ideology? What happens between her and her family before she leaves? Both excellent and necessary questions that are not answered. This is why talking about Scott needing to be "more" is a good lead-in to Kate: He is written poorly because his only characteristic is being in love with a poorly written character. Was their relationship toxic? Is Kate easily manipulated (thus implying Scott is manipulative)? We don't know. There is so much missing about Kate, which just makes her come across as clueless and annoying.

Unfortunately, the plot doesn't save this book. All the "secrets" are boring and predictable. There's one big "plot twist" at the end, and it didn't have any breadcrumbs leading up to it (except one SINGLE THING that did not stand well on its own). I don't want to spoil it at all, but I think it's also safe to say that the big twist fully undid a whole lot of character development for a certain character. It had the same vibes as those mystery books that have to outright lie to the reader in order to have an engaging mystery, which just feels so lazy.

Also, a lot of the plot hinged on people behaving in ways that don't make sense. Scott, Meredith, and Abbi all have their fair share of moments here, but the biggest offenders were the FBI. I don't need a book to have completely accurate police proceedings, but it needs to feel realistic, and this did not. They made weird claims about what is or is not illegal, they got involved at weird points in weird ways, and they talked more like expositional plot devices rather than professional FBI agents.

Honestly, this concept would've been better served as two separate books. Not a duology, but two entirely different books: Then and Now. Kate's story was interesting, and the story of the family rebuilding was interesting, but together they ended up half-baked.

Overall, the book was fine. I read it (pretty quickly, although it is short) and didn't hate it while I was reading. But as soon as I finished, I felt underwhelmed and unsatisfied. Anything that you might like about this book can be found in another book that's a better reading experience.