Until I Find You

Until I Find You by Rea Frey
St. Martin's Publishing: 8/11/20
review copy; 320 pages

Until I Find You by Rea Frey is a recommended domestic thriller.

Rebecca (Bec) Gray is nearly blind with a degenerative eye disease. She is also a recent widow, a new mother, and then her mother passed away after she came to live with her. To say her life has been stressful is an understatement, but Bec is managing to get by. Her photographic memory helps her to count steps and remember the number she takes to reach various things and places. She continues to meet friends for coffee, takes walks, and meets friends at the park. The only problem is that she feels like someone is watching her. It also appears that someone is getting into her house. But when she is sure that someone has switched babies and the one she has now is not her son Jackson, no one is certain she is correct. Bec must rely on her own instincts to find out what happened to Jackson and bring him home.

The search for Jackson is tense and Bec is portrayed as a strong woman who is facing the adversity head on, even when it is thought that she may be suffering from a psychological disorder. Her friends can't tell if the baby she now has is Jackson or not. The police don't believe her either. After a slow start, the plot picked up and held my attention. Frey does do an excellent job portraying a capable woman with a visual impairment. This is in some ways more of a domestic drama combined with a romance, although there is a mystery included. I'm not a fan of the ending, but it does provide a fitting conclusion to the narrative.

So, I feel a little sheepish admitting that I didn't care for the characters of Bec and her friends almost from the start and they all seemed the same. Perhaps it was the obvious depiction that this is how the wealthy young mothers live and I certainly didn't know people liked this when I was a young mother - Nannys, plenty of time for walks, trips to the park, a support group, going out for coffee, attending a neighborhood party, make plans to redo the house... Yeah, you could do some of that with a three month old, but not as easily as described. And why didn't Bec accept help as soon as she thought someone was stalking her and going into her house? Then once she thought someone had switched babies, uh, blood tests people. Jackson's blood type would already be on record. If that was the same blood type, then genetic tests are available. It also seemed that her fainting spells and panic attacks were too convenient a plot device. Okay, I liked the novel, but I didn't love it.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Macmillan.