Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Behind the Red Door, by Megan Collins {ends 8/12}

Guest review by: Becki Bayley

Eric could tell me I’m spiraling. Dr. Lockwood could say I’ve been stuck in a groove. But I would know that I’m not. My nightmares and flashes, my time alone in Foster, this description in the memoir—it’s telling me it was all real, a memory and not a dream.

I do have a whisper of doubt, though. A tiny one. So insignificant I can barely hear it. It’s just -- I flip back to the beginning of the book. Skim the prologue until I find the sentence I’m looking for. Place my finger beneath it.

She saw a feature of the man that I never did, Astrid wrote about the witness. But in my memory of the man, I can’t see his face at all. The mask is a shield.

A crime, unsolved for two decades, may have been committed again? What a horror for the victim, and how scary for someone else who suspects she may have been involved.

Official synopsis:

When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.

Back at her childhood home to help her father pack for a move, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. With the help of her psychologist father, Fern digs deeper, hoping to find evidence that her connection to Astrid can help the police locate her. But when Fern discovers more about her own past than she ever bargained for, the disturbing truth will change both of their lives forever.

Poor Fern Douglas. Her serious and constant anxiety, while written well and totally believable, make her not especially comfortable to hang around. She always was imagining what could go catastrophically wrong. The anxiety seems perfectly justified after the childhood she experienced. Her father, Ted, treated her horrifically. He pretty much spends most of the book maintaining that since she was his child, he could treat her however he wanted, short of physically abusing her.

When Fern goes back to her father’s house to help him pack and prepare to move, she thinks since he’s retired they can hang out and actually have a normal relationship. Unfortunately, Ted just wants to see her reactions when a 20-year-old abduction is brought back into the spotlight as the crime seems to have repeated itself.

Without spoiling anything, the plot in this book was really predictable. The author tries to throw a couple alternatives into our reading path, but it all came back around as originally expected. Overall, I’d give the book 3 out of 5 stars. While it was well-written and conveyed the horror of the whole experience of being Fern, the plot played out pretty predictability, and the ending didn’t really leave the reader feeling good about it all.

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Becki Bayley is a school employee, wife, mom, and reader. See more of her books (and a few flowers) on her Instagram where she posts as PoshBecki.

GIVEAWAY:

One of my lucky readers will win a copy of Behind the Red Door!

Enter via the widget below. Giveaway will end on Wednesday, August 12th, at 11:59pm EST, and winner will be notified via email, and have 24 hours to respond, or an alternate winner will be chosen.

U.S. residents only, please.

Good luck!

Behind the Red Door, by Megan Collins