by Harlan Coben
First published 2012
Megan lives the suburban dream with her husband and two children, but her perfect life feels suffocating. She carries secrets from her wilder past that no one suspects. Ray once captured truth through his camera lens as a documentary photographer. Now forty, he makes ends meet by chasing celebrities for tabloid shots, his talent wasted on rich kids obsessed with fame. Detective Jack cannot abandon an old case that haunts him. Every year on the anniversary, he visits the home of a man who vanished seventeen years ago. The family still waits. The missing father's slippers remain by his chair. Three people trapped in lives they never wanted find their buried secrets surfacing. The past crashes into the present with devastating force. Each must confront what lies beneath their carefully constructed facades. Megan faces the cost of her hidden history. Ray confronts his lost dreams. Jack discovers that some cases refuse to stay cold. Their separate worlds collide as they learn that forgetting the past may be impossible, and perhaps undesirable.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: buried-secrets, past-haunting-present
Setting: Suburban
Period: Present Day
387 pages · Hardcover · Dutton