The Lost Ones

I'm always on the lookout for a new mystery series.  Although this is good as a stand-alone novel, I'm excited to read more by Kamal in the future.

Synopsis:

It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen years—since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren’t looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope.

A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what happens to vulnerable girls on the streets. Caring despite herself, she sets out to find Bonnie with her only companion, her mutt Whisper, knowing she risks reopening wounds that have never really healed—and plunging into the darkness with little to protect her but her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

The search uncovers a puzzling conspiracy that leads Nora on a harrowing journey of deception and violence, from the gloomy rain-soaked streets of Vancouver, to the icy white mountains of the Canadian interior, to the beautiful and dangerous island where she will face her most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.

My Thoughts:

The Lost Ones is a suspenseful, page turning novel. Kamal's protagonist, Nora, reveals bits and pieces about her past throughout the novel, which left me wanting to know more. This is plugged as the first in a series, and I would happily read more installments because of getting to know the heroine.

Nora gave her child up for adoption fifteen years ago. Now, the daughter she has never met is missing and the adoptive parents reach out to Nora to find her. Although Nora brushes them off, she begins looking for the girl on her own. This is not a simple case of a missing child. Conspiracies unfold as Nora searches for the girl.

Without giving too much away, I'll just say there are plenty of twists and turns as the mystery unfolds, which is always fun to read a book and be surprised with where it takes you.

Overall, the tone of this novel is dark. I loved the Canadian setting and getting to know Nora. I'll happily try another in this series to see where Kamal takes things.


Thanks to TLC Book Tours for providing a copy of this book for me to read.  All opinions expressed are, as always, my own.

For more information, visit the HarperCollins website.