The Boy at the Door
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Set against a stunning Scandinavian backdrop, a gritty novel of psychological suspense that asks the question how far would you go to hold onto what you have?
Cecilia Wilborg has it all--a loving husband, two beautiful daughters and a gorgeous home in the affluent Norwegian town of Sandefjord. And she works hard to keep it all together. Too hard. Because one mistake from her past could bring it all crashing down around her.
Annika Lucasson lives a dark life with her abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend. She's lost everything one too many times and now she's got one last chance to save herself, thanks to Cecilia. Annika knows her secret--and just how much she's willing to do to make it all go away...
When someone forgets to pick up their little boy at the local pool, Cecilia agrees to take him home, only to find an abandoned, empty house. It's the first step in the unraveling of her meticulously crafted life, as her and Annika's worlds collide...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Sandefjord, Norway, Dahl's heartrending first novel focuses on Cecilia Wilborg, a well-to-do suburban wife seething with anger, frustration, and a long-hidden secret. One October evening, after her daughters' swimming session, Cecilia finds herself willy-nilly caring for Tobias, a seven-year-old boy who was abandoned at the public pool. When she tries to take Tobias home, she discovers that the address he gives is an empty house. Cecilia's fraught involvement with the boy soon leads to a dizzying downward spiral of alcohol, drugs, lying, and guilt. Her first-person narrative alternates with two other pain-filled stories, one revealed through the cathartic journal kept by Annika Lucasson a viciously exploited drug addict who once tended to Tobias and knows Cecilia's secret and the other centered on the psychologically damaged Tobias. Their intersecting tales reveal ironic twists of fate en route to the bittersweet conclusion. Dahl savagely delineates the price of living in a society that insists women must try to be perfect wives and mothers and have successful careers, too, or they'll be inevitably made to feel they're never good enough.
