In place of these essentials, she focusses on a hidden agenda involving revenge and retribution that can only be revealed by reading the novel. Instead, she elects to muddle along with no money, no job, no shelter, and no ID.

However, she turns up one night, weak and destitute, with a horrific tale of kidnap, confinement, torture, rape, and attempted murder at the hands of a person she calls “the monster.” Following her escape, Lydia’s behavior can only be construed as strange since she fails to report the crime. Lydia, Luca’s first wife, has been legally dead for a decade following her disappearance. Kent tells her story in alternating chapters narrated by the two wives of Luca Coletto. Notwithstanding this shortcoming, twisty plotting and unnerving characters redeem the novel to some extent. However, since she does not capitalize on it in her narrative, the setting falls a little flat. Setting her novel in the Pacific Northwest, with its iconic dark forests and gloomy rain, suggests Kent intended to evoke the kind of gothic mood that Faulkner exploited with the Deep South.

Because Lydia isn't the only one with secrets.Show More central plot element is the shocking return of a character presumed to have been dead for a decade. What is it about Lydia that's especially unnerving? Why hasn't she gone to the police with her harrowing tale? What does she really want of them? The answers, when they come, are terrifying. But the more enmeshed Lydia becomes in Merritt's family, the more questions Merritt has. Racked with guilt over the beautiful life they've built, Merritt and Luca agree to help get Lydia back on her feet-it's the least they can do. A torturous confinement that should've ended with her dead. Missing for ten years, presumed dead, and very much alive, she has quite a story.

Weak, broken, and emaciated, it's Luca's first wife, Lydia. That dream ends with a late-night knock on the door. Merritt Coletto and her husband, Luca, have the life they dreamed of: a coastal home, a promising future, and a growing family. A return from the past knocks a family dangerously off-balance in a novel of spiraling suspense by Washington Post and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Minka Kent.

Unmissing by Minka Kent