Two girls that were opposite come together to be the best of friends. Their names were Anna Clark and Lia Clay. These two became inseparable in high school. However, one day (while they were in college), Lia disappeared. This left Anna alone and hurt that her friend just abandoned her. Little did Anna know that she would discover a letter from Lia twenty years later that would send her on a journey to discover the truth about her friend.
This book is a real page-turner and will keep you asking what is going to happen next. It tests the true meaning of friendship in ways one can only imagine. If you love to read mysteries and books about deep dark secrets, this is the book for you!!
Sorry, I will not give away any secrets here. You must read the book to determine if Lia is a true friend to Anna or a foe that she never even knew. ( )

This is a book that’s going to stay with me a while. There are so many layers of emotion hiding under the characters facades. I’m not sure I really liked any of the characters, except maybe Faith, but I wanted badly to know and understand them. There are some moral and ethical issues addressed in ways that I’m not sure I approve of, but I keep trying to figure out another ending, without much luck

This would be a great reading group book pick! So much to talk about ( )

Disclosure: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers Red Adept Publishing, via Library Thing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Leimkuhler’s schmaltzy novel of friendship, secrets, and family ties, is ultimately a predictable soap opera with a dubious resolution.

When we first meet Anna Wells, she seems to be in the midst of an early mid-life crisis. With 40 looming on the horizon, Anna has a husband, three daughters, a pair of recent miscarriages, and an unhealthy obsession with a high school friend who had disappeared from her life 20 years earlier with no explanation. Anna, in fact, definitely has problems letting go of things – her determination to provide her loving husband with a son, her unwillingness (as the book progresses) to allow her oldest child to grow up and leave the nest, and always, always, ALWAYS, that sore spot that is the disappearance of Lia Clay.

When an invitation arrives to Anna and her husband’s 20th high school reunion, she initially turns it down, finally compelled, almost on a whim, to attend in hopes that Lia will be there. Lia does in fact turn up, and most of the rest of the book alternates between current-time and flashback episodes as the history of the difficult friendship is explored. Leimkuhler calls this fascination with the missing years a kind of time travel, in which the travelers go back in time to retrieve what has been lost.

Some things, it turns out, would probably have been best lost, because after all the sturm und drang of the next couple hundred pages, there’s a resolution (of sorts) that would have played out in exactly the same way without the ultimately traumatizing journey.

The book includes three (okay, four) Big Reveals. The first two can be seen coming from miles away, and once the second secret comes out, the third (and, ultimately, fourth) are inevitable. Most readers will have foreseen them no later than the halfway point, and the last section of the novel deals with the characters’ attempts to deal with the fallout.

Leimkuhler has chosen a construction that breaks the action into extremely short chapters, giving the story a somewhat choppy pace. Even though she keeps the POV firmly with Anna, the reader can only wonder at some of the decisions the character makes.

Don’t look for any literary fireworks from this lightweight entry, which might make a congenial companion for an otherwise empty weekend. ( )

After reading over half this book, I finally let myself off the hook. I never felt any connection with the characters and the prose was so flowery that I frequently gave up on it. Occasionally the writing was succinct and I became more interested in the plot but this never became the norm. It’s possible this book could have been salvaged by some experienced editing, but as it is I doubt it will be successful. ( )