If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch
Pages : 256
Genre : Contemporary Fiction
Stand alone
My Rating : 4,5/5
What it’s about :
One day, after an unusually long absence from their mother, two strangers come to bring the girls back to civilization : one of them is Carey’s dad, the man she has always been taught to fear. Leaving the cold and hunger for a new home where she will never again feel the need for anything, Carey will have to confront the truth about her past, and see if she can learn to trust again.
My Thoughts :
I wasn’t prepared for what If You Find Me had in store for me. Even with the great reviews I had read on Goodreads and some blogs, I thought it would simply be an entertaining story with a more serious tone than the ones I have been reading lately. While this preconception hold true, it was also a lot more emotional and “true” than I had expected.
In fact, I feel a bit at a loss writing this review. I have lots of keywords to describe my reading of Emily Murdoch’s debut novel, but very few complete sentences : intense; emotional; evocative prose; complexity. This is a tale of a neglected childhood that felt surprisingly realistic to me. I also feel that even without having lived through the horrific events of Carey’s life, many readers will be able to relate to her characters : her fears, her thoughts, her despair, are all similar to what many of us go through in our teenage years, although in different situations. I thought the woods Carey grew up in were a beautiful metaphor of life’s more difficult times (and the beauty we can see through them), which made all the more sense once I read this guest post by the author at The Midnight Garden (it’s a gorgeous post; go read it!)
The book itself wasn’t perfect : I thought the romance was really unnecessary, and I would have preferred for Carey to discover simple friendship first (although there is a bit of that, too). I also felt like the “mystery” would have had a stronger effect if it had been shared from the start, allowing us to understand Carey a little bit more.
These negative aspects didn’t matter much though; in the end, I absolutely loved If You Find Me. It was grim and depressing at time, yet beautifully contrasted with love and hope – these two feelings mostly represented by the two sisters, who have very distinct attitudes toward their new lives.
If You Find Me is already a favorite of mine this year, and I strongly recommend it to readers of contemporary fiction. I absolutely can’t wait to read more from Emily Murdoch!
If You Find Me is available for sale right now! Thanks to St. Martin’s Griffin for generously providing a digital copy of the book for this review.
