I Found You by Lisa Jewell

Blurb
In a windswept British seaside town, single mom Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside.

Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

Twenty-three years earlier, Gray and Kirsty are teenagers on a summer holiday with their parents. Their annual trip to the quaint seaside town is passing by uneventfully, until an enigmatic young man starts paying extra attention to Kirsty. Something about him makes Gray uncomfortable—and it’s not just that he’s playing the role of protective older brother.

Two decades of secrets, a missing husband, and a man with no memory are at the heart of this brilliant new novel, filled with the “beautiful writing, believable characters, pacey narrative, and dark secrets” (London Daily Mail) that make Lisa Jewell so beloved by audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Review

I Found You by Lisa Jewel tells the story of three people who met in some very strange circumstances. Lily is newly married and still stuck at the honeymoon phase until her husband mysteriously disappears. Alice is a single mother of three who invites an amnesiac stranger into her home. The amnesiac stranger also narrates his story as we watch him slowly regain his memory through the chapters.

The story starts out strong and I was immediately hooked from the first chapter. The 1993 narrations of the past about Gray and Kristy threw me off at first but I soon got the hang of it. The different perspectives are narrated through alternating chapters with each chapter ending with a cliff hanger that makes you eager to get to the following chapters. The three stories run concurrently until they finally merge.

I think that the author did an amazing job with the character development. I liked Alice from the start. She is such a flawed character but with an amazing personality. Some of her decisions like welcoming the stranger to her home seemed bizarre at first but after getting to know her, it all made sense. I was on the fence about Lily through some of the chapters but I sympathized with her. 21 years old, in a foreign country and with a missing husband, poor girl! She really had a tough time especially when secrets started being revealed.

I even liked the support characters like Alice’s kids who were so adorable. Even the dogs, peacocks and some of the houses had personalities. Seriously, the author ensured that everyone played a role in this book in the best, most memorable ways possible.The thing with such strong characters though is that they have the ability to break your heart. There were chapters that were so tragic that I found myself wishing for a different outcome for the characters. Other characters disappointed me when their masks fell off.

This book is superbly written. Lisa’s writing is enchanting. Once you start reading the book, it becomes hard to put it down. The suspense was thick throughout the book. I had two main suspects while reading this but I was still surprised at the end when everything was revealed.

Lisa Jewell’s I Found You has everything that makes a good thriller. It has secrets, lies, murder, a dancing peacock and twisted characters. It also has amnesiac characters which I find quite interesting in thrillers. The writing is so addictive that I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. I remember getting to the last page and just sitting there in awe of the author. How did she come up with such an awesome plot-line with all these incredible characters? Everything about this book was just perfect! I highly recommend this book to all fans of this genre.