[Review] Nowhere Like Home - Sara Shepard

Summary: When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all.

Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are these women and why did Rhiannon invite her here? And that is before she learns about the community's rules (no outside phone calls, no questions about people’s pasts) and the padlock on the gate that leads out to the main road. But Lenna has other concerns, secrets from her past she is terrified will come out. When a newcomer arrives in the community, Lenna’s worst fears are confirmed—she was brought here for a reason.

Nowhere Like Home tackles themes of complicated friendships and trauma but all with Sara Shepard’s expert twists that you don’t see coming. (Pub Date: Feb 20, 2024)

 

I haven't read or watched Pretty Little Liars. I'd even forgot this was by same writer and for a lot of this book wondered if this was her first or second work as a book author. At least now I know she's been a professional writer for so long, I don't need to hold back.

3+ because a lot of the story did get me involved.

Lenna is invited to this community of moms by an estranged friend with whom she wishes to reconnect, but getting there everything feels off, she feels watched, her things disappears, and she's afraid it might even bring to surface the trauma she's worked so hard to bury.

The book is told from four points of view, in two different times. One will take us to the source of Lenna's trauma and distance from Rhiannon, one will show us when she finds Rhiannon again after two years and visits the closed community where her old friend lives. I don't like how the story forces us into thinking this or that of people, it more than once made me suspect being manipulated. Not just that it was hiding things from me, we want that when reading these types of book, but that it was lying to me. I didn't want to go back and check because I actually enjoyed the book. 

For a lot of the book, it builds very toxic relationships and it makes you curious about how the toxicity happened and where it will lead to. When you think you've been saved, you realize it wasn't really that. Or was it? For maybe the first half of the book, this was well done, enticing. Please, tell me more! But then it becomes too much. For some time I wondered if the writer had a kink for twisted characters and privileged those over a believable plot. However, the book derailed even more as we get to the climax and it just felt like a soap opera plot they had to come up with due to some contingency. Really, I even ask myself if the person who planned the basis for the story is the same who gave it the conclusion, because this story could have gone so many more interesting places. Or at least a less convoluted explanation—I'd have preferred the predictable. Moreover, the ending... it never ended! I definitely wasn't invested enough for all those extra pages. 

Unfortunately, the way it developed made the part about toxic friendships lose meaning to me, but it was still delicious to read while it lasted. I'll probably carry good memories of this read because there's a big chance I'll forget all the complicated explanations the second half brings us.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.