Where are the Children Now? Book Review

Where are the Children Now?

By: Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke

Publish Date: 18 April 2023

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

General Fiction (Adult)

#WhereAreTheChildrenNow#NetGalley

I would like to first thank both NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for allowing me to read and review this book.

Good Reads Synopsis:

Of the fifty-six bestsellers the “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark published in her lifetime, Where Are the Children? was her biggest, selling millions of copies and forever transforming the genre of suspense fiction. In that story, a young California mother named Nancy Harmon was convicted of murdering her two children. Though released on a technicality, she was abandoned by her husband and became such a pariah in the media that she was forced to move across the country to Cape Cod, change her identity and appearance, and start a new life. Years later her two children from a second marriage, Mike and Melissa, would go missing, and Nancy yet again became the prime suspect—but this time, Nancy was able to confront the secrets buried in her past and rescue her kids from a dangerous predator.

Now, more than four decades since readers first met Nancy and her children, comes the thrilling sequel to the groundbreaking book that set the stage for future generations of psychological suspense novels. A lawyer turned successful podcaster, Melissa has recently married a man whose first wife died tragically, leaving him and their young daughter, Riley, behind. While Melissa and her brother, Mike, help their mom, Nancy, relocate from Cape Cod to the equally idyllic Hamptons, Melissa’s new stepdaughter goes missing. Drawing on the experience of their own abduction, Melissa and Mike race to find Riley to save her from the trauma they still struggle with—or worse.

Book Review:

I loved this book and gave it 5 stars. Mary Higgins Clar does it again. I know she passed away a little over a year ago and I will miss her writing. I am glad she was working on this novel so we could get a follow up on this story.

The good reads synopsis does a really good job on telling you what the story line is about so i won’t go into too much detail. I love how the family work together to help each other even though Melissa doesn’t want to talk about what happened to them forty years ago. I also love the friendship in the story. They become friends with the next doors neighbor who helped find them forty years and now they are there for them with Riley missing. Not everything seems to fit the picture that Melissa was given by her husband, and she is trying to figure what is going on and who took her stepdaughter and why. Melissa thinks it has something to do with a case she was on several years ago before she started her podcast. She also isn’t telling most people about the troll that is on her social media that is calling her a fraud and lair. Are the two connect or is it something else? You will have to read the book to find out. I would also suggest that you reread the first book to get the full picture. You don’t have to because there is enough information given in the book.