First published 2025
Cleo arrives late for dinner at her Brooklyn childhood home to find food burning in the oven and her mother Kat missing. Under the sofa lies her mother's bloody shoe. Cleo knows her mother as a successful Park Slope lawyer, happily married and controlled. Everything Cleo is not. Their relationship has fractured over Cleo's emotional volatility and risky choices. But Kat has been hiding the truth. She works as her law firm's fixer, skills honed during a brutal childhood in group homes. In the days before vanishing, Kat faced mounting pressures from all sides. Her cheating husband demanded money as their marriage collapsed. Anonymous threats from her past surfaced. Most frightening, Cleo had returned to a dangerous relationship she couldn't see clearly. Kat kept all these secrets from her daughter. Now Cleo must uncover her mother's hidden world to find her. The search reveals how little they truly knew each other and how far each will go to protect the other.
Genres: mystery, contemporary, thriller, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: family-drama, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Brooklyn, Park Slope
Period: contemporary
Paperback
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence, emotional-abuse