Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2019
320 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
A provocative novel of psychological suspense about two women locked in a desperate fight over a child each believes is rightfully hers.
Libby needs a break. Three years ago her husband split, leaving her to raise their infant son Ethan alone as she struggled to launch her writing career. Now for the first time in years, things are looking up. She's just sold her first novel, and she and Ethan are going on a much-needed vacation. Everything seems to be going their way, so why can't she stop looking over her shoulder or panicking every time Ethan wanders out of view? Is it because of what happened when Ethan was born? Except Libby's never told anyone the full story of what happened, and there's no way anyone could find her and Ethan at a faraway resort...right?
But three days into their vacation, Libby's fears prove justified. In a moment of inattention, Ethan wanders into an elevator before Libby can reach him. When the elevator stops and the doors open, Ethan is gone. Hotel security scours the building and finds no trace of him, but when CCTV footage is found of an adult finding the child wandering alone and leading him away by the hand, the police are called in. The search intensifies, a lost child case turning into a possible abduction. Hours later, a child is seen with a woman stepping through an emergency exit. Libby and the police track the woman down and corner her, but she refuses to release Ethan. Asked who she is, the woman replies:
"I'm his mother."
What follows is one of the most shocking, twist-y, and provocative works of psychological suspense ever written. A story of stolen identity, of surrogacy gone horribly wrong, and of two women whose insistence that each is the "real" mother puts them at deadly cross-purposes, Lost You is sure to be one of 2019's most buzzed-about novels.
"The twists and turns are not only masterfully paced and layered but so is the emotional impact. ... an adrenaline-pumping, anxiety-inducing thriller built around a core so sentimental it just might make you cry." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Beck (Edgar finalist Stuart Neville) tells a richly complicated story about two desperate women and the reality of surrogacy in America." - Publishers Weekly
"Deliciously twisty and seriously dark...I couldn't put it down." - Natasha Bell, author of His Perfect Wife
"Far too few thrillers have genuine suspense, twists that give you goosebumps and—most important—characters that you really care about. Lost You has it all." - Mark Billingham, author of Their Little Secret
This information about Lost You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Haylen Beck is the pseudonym of acclaimed, Edgar Award-nominated author Stuart Neville, whose crime fiction has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and made best-of-year lists with numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. His first Haylen Beck novel was Here and Gone.
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