REVIEW: Come Back for Me by Heidi Perks (ARC)

Come Back For Me by Heidi Perks

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Read: 20th May 2019

Goodreads

Purchase: Amazon

(release date: 1st June 2019)

★★★★ 4 stars

Heidi Perks is yet another new author for me and I was excited at the prospect of reading such an intriguing mystery in an unusual setting. COME BACK FOR ME is both complex and compelling, and while I struggled to begin with, the story certainly picked up pace and made up for its slow start.

1993:
Born and bred on the remote and sheltered community of Evergreen Island, eleven year old Stella loves her island home and never wants to leave. She has her little circle of friends - her best friend being Jill Taylor. She simply cannot imagine a life beyond Evergreen and is happy there. But she is not silly. She notices things. Her parents; neighbours; other people's strange behaviours - including those of her siblings.

Bonnie is Stella's 17 year old sister and she hated Evergreen. With no friends she felt as though she never fit in...until Iona came to the island as part of her university study. Together they were inseparable. At last Bonnie had someone who understood her. But did Iona have an ulterior motive? Was there a specific reason she befriended Bonnie?

Danny is 15 and Stella's brother. As a middle child, he is quiet, reserved and happy in his own company. He is not comfortable amongst people and whenever he is they only seem to laugh and make fun of him. So he prefers to be on his own with his drawings often hiding in the treehouse that their dad built for them. But then Danny notices Iona. He can't stop watching her, following her with his sketch pad. It irritates Bonnie that he is always there, watching. Why? He may be her brother but he is seriously weird.

Then suddenly one night, Stella and her family left Evergreen amid a raging storm one night in 1993. She'd always been so happy there and could never understand why they had to leave so suddenly...and she was never given an adequate explanation as to why.

2018:
Stella is now in her late thirties and her family has completely fallen apart. Her parents divorced soon after their move from Evergreen. Six years later their brother Danny left without a word and was never seen or heard from again and her 40-something sister Bonnie is an alcoholic. Their mother died some years back and their father had since remarried and now is in the early stages of dementia. What happened on Evergreen all those years ago to destroy the loving family she once had?

Now a body has been found on the island - almost in the backyard of their old house - spurring Stella to return to the island for the first time in 25 years. She is determined to discover answers to the long since buried past and uncover the truth of what really happened to make her family flee their happy home so suddenly. But when she arrives, things have changed and the villagers are not as friendly as she had remembered. There appear to be many secrets hiding beneath the surface of the island and villagers will stop at nothing to keep them hidden.

But secrets have a way of sneaking to the surface as Stella begins to delve into those that have long been buried. But are the island's secrets the same secrets she is trying to uncover? Are they best left unknown? And how will Stella react to learning the truth about these secrets that have been buried for 25 years? Whose body was buried in the garden of her old home? And who killed them?

A dual timeline book (again, my favourite kind), COME BACK FOR ME is a complex, twisted tale that will engage the reader almost from the start right up to its riveting end. It is a slow burner to begin with and often these types have me struggling at the start but usually end up picking up pace with a race to the finish! Which it did. It most certainly did.

There is so much more to COME BACK FOR ME than I have mentioned (which is but a small part) which will keep you engrossed within Stella's world from start to finish. So much about it is riveting, compelling, intriguing and even a little twisted. You won't want to put it down.

I would like to thank #HeidiPerks, #NetGalley and #RandomHouseUK and #Cornerstone for an ARC of #ComeBackForMe in exchange for an honest review.