As soon as we sat on the ride I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t hear the theme park music, the giggles of my two other children. I’d left my baby in someone else’s care. And I knew I’d made a mistake…
With her two beautiful children and newborn baby Ella, Lily’s life is full of love and laughter. She gave up her job to be a stay-at-home mother, and though she sometimes envies the freedom of best friend Hannah, Lily wouldn’t trade it for anything.
But Lily’s world implodes when Hannah disappears with Ella one day, and Lily fears from the text message she receives that Hannah doesn’t intend to come back:
You don’t deserve her.
It’s true that Lily has been keeping secrets about her marriage from Hannah, ones she thought only she and her husband knew. Suddenly Lily realises that there are things she doesn’t know about Hannah too – and that by keeping her husband’s secrets, she might pay the ultimate sacrifice.
A rollercoaster ride of emotions, Save My Daughter will break your heart. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Kate Hewitt and Diane Chamberlain will be swept away by Sam Vickery’s utterly gorgeous novel.
My Thoughts
As soon as you read the description for this book you just know it is going to be one of those incredibly powerful stories that nestles itself in your heart, and it certainly did that.
Lily and Hannah have been best friends many years, with a strong sense of trust and loyalty between them, Lily would trust Hannah with anything. When Lily and her husband Jon decide to take their children on a trip to an amusement park, they invite Hannah along.
Hannah loves baby Ella, and she is one of the few people Lily would trust with her daughter, so inviting her along seems like the most logical choice, that way both Lily and Jon can spend some quality time with their two older children in the knowledge that Ella is safe.
However, when the rollercoaster reaches the top, Lily can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. When the ride is over and Lily returns to the place where Hannah and Ella were waiting for them, she is distraught to find that they are both gone.
The story is told from the perspective of both Lily and Hannah, giving us an insight as to what is going on inside both characters head as this complex story begins to unfold. The alternating chapters added an extra dose of suspense to the story, which was already bound to be a page turner.
The characters are intricate and so wonderfully brought to life by the author. I found myself feeling for both Lily and Hannah for many different reasons. As a mother, what happens in this story is every parents worst nightmare, and your heart really goes out to Lily and want Ella to be reunited with her much loved parents. And then of course we see the world through the eyes of Hannah, and your heart breaks for this woman and the events that have lead up to this event. Despite what these women seem to believe, even the closest of friends don’t truly know everything about one another, and when the secrets finally come bubbling to the surface, you are on the edge of your seat as you watch them unfold.
This is undoubtedly one of the most captivating stories I have read this year. With the perfect level of suspense building up throughout, and with many twists and turns to the story thrown in along the way, I found it impossible to put this book down and finished within a day. An absolute page turner, and a book that everyone should read this year.
You can purchase a copy of this book by following the links below:
Amazon: https://bit.ly/3d33GN3 Apple: https://apple.co/3otmzx7 Kobo: https://bit.ly/3q5DIgI Google: https://bit.ly/39iGJn6
About the Author
Sam Vickery is an English author who loves gritty, emotional stories that can make you sob. As a child, she was forever getting in trouble for being caught with her nose in a book, and these days are no different. She lives on the south coast of England with her husband, two children and a cat that thinks it’s a dog.
*Thank you to Sarah Hardy, Bookouture and Sam Vickery for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review. All thoughts are entirely my own and not influenced in any way.*
Victoria Wilks 