Title: The Foster Famiily
Author: Nicole Trope
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 3,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon

In their holiday home, a stone’s throw from the beach, Elizabeth dials the police with trembling hands. ‘My little boy, he’s missing.’

Elizabeth is Joe’s foster mother, but she loves him like her own. The five-year-old, who adores superheroes and watching the birds outside, is the child she has dreamed of. As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest.

She was meant to save Joe from his birth mother who almost harmed his chances at life. The woman who has been trying to desperately get him back.

She was meant to protect Joe from her husband. The man who, right now, lies to the police, saying he was making breakfast when Joe disappeared. Who squeezes her shoulder, ordering her to be quiet.

She was meant to look after Joe. They are just footsteps from the ocean, and little Joe can’t swim.

Then Joe’s tiny blue sandal is found in the water. If the worst has happened – the unimaginable – Elizabeth will never forgive herself. Because what if the secret she has been keeping for years, the guilt eating her alive, has somehow hurt her little boy?

It’s time to tell the truth – even if it means losing the child who is her whole world. Even if it could be the death of her.

 

In The Foster Family, Elizabeth dials the police to inform them that her son has gone missing, little Joe. Joe is in fact her foster son, and Elizabeth and her husband Howard have gone to a holiday house near the beach to relax and enjoy some quality time with their little family of three.

Told in multiple POVs, the reader soon uncovers that there’s more to this family than meets the eye and that things between Howard and Elizabeth aren’t as great as they initially appear. Each chapter pulls back layer upon layer of this mystery, recalling the events leading up to the day when Joe went missing, intermixed with chapters of the police’s frantic search for Joe.

First, the good. The characterization is well done, and each character feels three-dimensional and fully fleshed out, in particular Elizabeth, Howard and Gordon. The author’s descriptions of the illness tormenting Gordon was at times heart-breaking, but they seemed to be a spot-on description of how it feels to deal with dementia. The writing in general is solid, and the plot has enough twists to be entertaining.

Now, the bad. The pacing. I found this book to be such an incredibly slow read, it felt like the plot was crawling along. Something happened, then there were a few pages filled with details about the events, or the characters’ thoughts about it, and so on. It was also repetitive at times, and honestly I just wanted the plot to move along faster.

Despite that, I did enjoy it, and I’ll definitely pick up one of the author’s other books in the future. There’s information about her other books in the back matter, and she already has an impressive bibliography it seems.

Title: A Universal Storm
Author: Gershon Shevach
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
A mysterious revolution sends the entire world reeling into darkness and chaos

A huge power outage that paralyzes the world’s electric and communication systems is the backdrop for a plot that goes from explosions in Tel Aviv to Paris, where an Israeli journalist tries to make sense of the global chaos. He is afforded insight into the realities of the Middle East, as he grasps the terrible price of revolutions that attempt to create a new reality.

A journalist leaves no stone unturned in his search for understanding and the perpetrators

He had come to Paris to report on a small boat that sailed from Israel powered only by wind energy. The crisis forced sailor and journalist to sail back to Israel together on a boat built for one. There the journalist discovers that his friends died in an explosion at the newspaper office. His pursuit of the truth leads him to The Engineer, who tells him an amazing story beginning with an Israeli rescue team that sends a Muslim girl to Israel for treatment. From this he finally discovers who perpetrated the world chaos.

In A Universal Storm, a mysterious revolution sends the entire world into darkness and chaos. A huge power outage has paralyzed all electric and communication systems, and global chaos ensues. One journalist is desperate to uncover the truth, but for every secret he uncovers, ten more seem to be hidden.

The story isn’t that long, but it still packs a lot of action, thoughts, and a gut-wrenching punch near the end. The writing is solid, and the scenes flow well from one scene into the other. The book is basically a long commentary on revolutions and the price one has to pay for them, and in this regard it works really well. A lot of the twists and turns were unexpected for me, and I enjoyed reading this.