What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan

What a page-turner! I felt so many things when reading this book: suspense because I had no idea who did it and every chapter, I changed my guess or Macmillan proved my suspicions wrong; horrible sadness because of what this mother had to go through, basically alone for the most part; anger at the way the public was treating Rachel when she was at the lowest possible point of her life; and then at the end I felt this relief/sadness because no one in that family would ever be the same and even though Ben was found and reunited with his family, they could never go back and he lost all of his childlike innocence at such a young age and in such a horrendous way. Rachel mentioned in the last chapter that he was having difficulty trusting which broke my heart. Of course he was having difficulty trusting people, because the one person he trusted outside of his family turned on him and took him away from all that he loved and knew, taking advantage of his childlike trust and innocence.

Macmillan did a fantastic job with this novel, bringing to light all the horrible effects of kidnapping, especially the ones that people don't always consider: the aftermath, even when the child is found and reunited with his family, the publicity and the attacks against the parents, and the horrible psychological effects on the family and the main detective.

Jim was one of my favorite characters in this novel. He worked so hard to save Ben, to the point where he wasn't sleeping anymore. Then, the he finds out that the woman he loves has betrayed not only him, but Ben and Ben's family as well as the entire police force. So while he loves her, he has to remove her from his life because that kind of betrayal, against everything in his life, is too much. After the case is closed, Jim finds room to blame himself for not solving it sooner and for suspecting the wrong people, and because of all that, Jim can no longer function at work and can't sleep at night.

I really loved the way Macmillan wrote this novel. I loved the interweaving of styles, from Rachel's and Jim's perspective written out in regular narrative, to the addition of emails, blog posts, websites, and then the notes from Jim's counseling, which happened after the matter, but helped bring readers through exactly what Jim was feeling and how he was being impacted by the course of events. This change in writing styles really helped move the story forward and kept me entertained the whole time.

This was a fantastic read, and I would recommend it to everyone. It helps readers understand more what it's like for a family to go through something horrible like this, bringing both the perspectives of the family and the police force. It was captivating and heartbreaking and oh so good.