What readers think of Emma in the Night, plus links to write your own review.

This was a very well plotted mystery. Excellently researched with interesting characters.

Two sisters disappear after a fight over a necklace, two sisters leave no trace except a pair of shoes and a car on the beach, two sisters leave and then one sister returns after three years.

The police have questions for Cass about where she and Emma were, but Cass can't pinpoint where they have been held captive for the past three years. Cass only knows it was an island.

EMMA IN THE NIGHT moves along as we join in the questioning of Cass by the police and a psychologist. Cass tells all, but holds back some things on purpose. What Cass doesn't hold back is what she wants to shock her mother with because her mother was abusive and a narcissist.

Mrs. Martin as Cass calls her mother was the reason they left. Cass's story about their three years away was filled with half truths, and Cass seemed to lie quite a lot about many things.

The characters all seemed mentally disturbed and as if they had to be top dog competing with and against each other.

As the book continued, the tension about the story of the girls leaving home and the investigation increased. You never knew who to trust or to believe.

EMMA IN THE NIGHT is definitely a psychological thriller. The most interesting aspect was learning about narcissism and how it affects an entire family. It actually was an education and thoroughly frightening to learn about this disorder.

Readers who enjoy unusual family drama along with intense psychological situations to the point of unbelievable will enjoy EMMA IN THE NIGHT.

The ending was exceptional and unexpected, and the book was a bit disturbing. 4/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

I read Wendy Walker’s book “All is Not Forgotten” so was looking forward to reading this one. I love psychological thrillers.
Sisters Emma and Cass Tanner mysteriously disappear one night. Then three years later, Cass just as mysteriously returns home – alone. Cass describes how she and Emma were kidnapped and held against their will on a remote island. Dr. Abby Winter, a forensic psychiatrist with the FBI, and Special Agent Leo Strauss return to the case that had gone cold on them a year earlier. Now the search is resumed but this time only for Emma. What happened the night the girls disappeared? Where have they been for three years? And where is Emma?
I must say that the Tanner family is the epitome of a dysfunctional family. Cass and Emma’s parents, Owen and Judy, are divorced. Owen has a son named Witt from his first marriage. (Witt is the only stable one in the bunch.) Judy then marries Jonathan Martin who has a teenage son named Hunter. Judy now insists that her own daughter call her “Mrs. Martin”. This mother is a real “piece of cake”. She has a narcissistic personality disorder. If you are not familiar with this disorder, it means that she has an inflated sense of her own importance, with a constant need to feel admired. Since she believes the world revolves around her, she is incapable of feeling empathy for others. But behind all this, she has a very fragile self-esteem and cannot handle the slightest criticism. Imagine having her for a mother…
I found the pace to be very slow. I almost gave up on it several times. I didn’t find any of the characters engaging, and the only one that drew any emotion from me was Witt. While the story is told from the perspectives of Cass and Dr. Winter, it is written in third person. Thus the reader is unable to get into the head of the characters and left me with a feeling of detachment (the same complaint I had with “All is Not Forgotten”). The only chapter I felt any visceral response to was the last one, written as a first person perspective from Cass.
It is suspenseful, and it does have a twist. If you are not familiar with the behavior of a narcissist and how the disorder impacts those close to the person, it may be worth the read.