Keep Her Close

A gripping read that will have you on the edge of your seat

Right from the get go this book grabs a hold of you and does not let go! The reader is thrown in straight away with a heart-wrenching prologue, where Ally is introduced under the most horrific circumstances as a small child who has been abandoned in a deserted parking garage at a shopping mall, standing on a cardboard sign with the words "Free to a Good Home" scrawled across it. If that doesn't make you reach out for the tissues, I don't know what will! Married couple Dan and Holly come across Ally, and cannot believe that someone could abandon their child.

The story then picks up fifteen years later where we learn that Dan and Holly, who had been unable to have children of their own, had adopted Alley a year after they found her. All appears to be happily ever after. Ally is a well adjusted happy young adult now in college and loving life. But then she receives a letter from a man who claims to be her birth father. Curiosity peaked and with a need to find out about her past, Ally wants to go and meet him much to Dan's horror. Something does not feel right to him about it. Then Ally goes missing....

This is fundamentally a story of a parents love for their child, and how they will do whatever it takes to protect them. I can only imagine how parents of an adopted child must feel when that child chooses to take the path of finding their birth parents. The fear that they must feel at the possibility of losing them would be unbearable. Add to that now Ally has gone missing, this is a level of emotion that Holly and Dan have never experienced. Will they be able to get through it?

There are a range of colourful characters in the book, that are all well written and developed, but the one that stood out for me above anyone else was Dan. He is a bit of a loose cannon with some anger management issues, but if you were to ever find yourself missing, then he is the man that you would want to be out looking for you. His love for Ally and his determination, with a never give up attitude, that he showed in the search for his daughter, I found very touching. Erik does a great job in making the reader feel all of the emotions that Dan felt, I found myself feeling just as desperate as Dan in the search for Ally. I really loved his character.

I also really enjoyed Erik's writing style. He really knows this genre well, and does a great job at keeping the reader enthralled with just the right amount of suspense and intensity to keep you hooked. This is a fast paced, actioned packed, psychological thriller that was so full of twists and turns, that I was dizzy from them all! A great read that will have you on the edge of your seat, with an ending that I did not see coming! If this is how you like your books, then this is definitely for you.