“A twisty, hair-raising tale.”– Newsweek “A fast-paced psychological drama.” – GMA.com “Compulsively readable.” – PopSugar “Reinforces Walker’s place at the top of the genre.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Addictive.” – A.J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window “Gripping.” – Adrian McGinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain They said she walked … bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
“Gripping.” – Adrian McGinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain
They said she walked away. But what really happened to Molly Clarke?
From the bestselling author of All Is Not Forgotten comes a compelling and emotionally powerful story of a daughter’s desperate search to find her mother before it’s too late.
They called it a “walk away.” The car abandoned miles from home. The note found at a nearby hotel. The shattered family. It happens all the time. Women disappear, desperate to start over. But what really happened to Molly Clarke?
The night Molly disappeared began with a storm, running out of gas, and a man offering her a ride to safety. But when the doors lock shut, Molly begins to suspect she has made a terrible mistake.
A new lead brings Molly’s daughter, Nicole, back to the small, desolate town where her mother was last seen to renew the desperate search. The locals are sympathetic and eager to help. The innkeeper. The bartender. Even the police. Until secrets begin to reveal themselves and Nicole comes closer to the truth about that night—and the danger surrounding her.
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Don’t Look for Me by Wendy Walker was a thriller that will keep you captivated from start to finish. One day Molly Clarke’s life changed and not in a good way. Now she is living with guilt and loss. But is that enough to drive her away from her family, even if she feels they hate her? From here we are taken on a page turning journey that will keep us at the edge of our seats!
Happy reading!
This book was one crazy ride! It had many twists and turns that had me on the edge of my seat. Definitely one twisted read and I loved it! The vibe is dark. I LOVED that I didn’t figure out the ending! It’s refreshing not to figure out who did it or how it would end before the actual ending. Very well done, Miss Walker. The characters were pretty good. Some I felt for and some I wished they had gotten theirs. There’s a lot of emotional scenes. I did tear up at some of them. This was such a smashing and thrilling read! I was thoroughly engaged and didn’t stop reading till I got to the end. Fabulous! I look forward to reading more books by this author. I give this 5 stars.
Favorite Quote:
Not one of these “friends” had stuck around after she’d fallen off the social ladder. And it had not been gradual. The day she was expelled was the day her phone stopped ringing or buzzing or pinging. It was as though she’d caught a deadly virus. A social virus that no one wanted to catch.
My Review:
This was my first taste of Wendy Walker and I can smugly state I picked an excellent starting point to sample her lovely wares. Her storylines were frighteningly realistic and so emotive and tautly written that my kindle seemed to be vibrating from the tension and I am now in need of a spa day to work out the knots in my neck and catch my breath, which I often caught myself holding during perusal. This was a complex, gripping, and heart-squeezing tale laced with tragedy, grief, intrigue, and family drama. There were numerous tangled webs as well as oddly compelling characters to unravel, and this wily wordsmith kept me guessing on several fronts. I fell right into her evocative prose, which smoothly scrolled through my gray matter with sharp imagery and heart-wrenching scenarios. It was marvelous.
Her family has been torn apart by a horrible accident that has mired her in guilt, but did Molly Clarke really just walk away from her family with only a note telling them not to look for her? When Molly runs out of gas on her way home in the middle of a hurricane-related storm, she’s not far from the gas station. After finding it’s closed, she decides to walk toward town, already drenched. While walking left with no real options, When she is offered a ride by a man and his young child, she accepts, after all what could be safer? It turns out, not them. By the time she realizes, her clothes and bag disappear and without her phone, she is left at their mercy. What will her family think? Will they come looking for her? Why did the man and his daughter pick her?
Things have deteriorated so badly at home that Molly’s husband and daughter Nicole don’t notice she’s missing until the next day and her car is found. After a couple days of searching. Would Molly really have walked away from her two children, despite her guilt and grief at her role in the accident and the results. Despite her own guilt and grief, Nicole isn’t convinced, despite the evidence. When someone contacts her with more evidence, she heads back to the town to try and figure out what happened to her mother.
Told from the alternating viewpoints of both Molly and Nicole, we are treated to their guilt, anguish, remorse, and grief as each works through Molly’s disappearance. The characters are well-developed, as is the plot. Navigating through the town with it’s myriad of suspects, Walker has us twisting and turning, while she keeps us guessing. I stayed up way past my bedtime because I didn’t want to put it down and had to know what happened next. This was my first experience with Walker’s novels and I will be adding her previous ones to my TBR shelf to catch up.
Thanks to the Publisher for an advanced copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
#dontlookforme #wendywalker #stmartinspress
This is my first book by Wendy Walker. I have definitely found a new author that I want to read more of!!! This book is filled with suspense. I didn’t want to put it down. Molly Walker has had some bad things happen in her life. Her family is growing apart and she’s feeling a lot of guilt over something that happened with her daughter. I don’t want to give away the story, but if you like mystery and suspense, you will really enjoy this book! The story is told in two perspectives, and jumps back and forth between timelines for the first half, and then both people are in the same time frame. I really enjoyed this book. The characters are all flawed, but I found myself rooting for them. Well worth reading!!
This is one of the best books I’ve recently read and I recommend it highly. Brilliantly written, this is a powerful tale of family dynamics and pure evil. The plot is wonderfully twisty and filled with riveting characters. I did not want to put it down! I received this book free and chose to make a voluntary, unbiased review.
Never a spoiler in my review – this is about the book, not a recap of the story. This book enveloped me from the beginning. I came upon it by sheer accident and am so glad I took the chance. This is a new to me author who knows how to drive the story home. The story is very well written, suspenseful with loads of drama – will keep you guessing until the end, with no shortage of twists and turns until you get there. A nail biter-edge-of-your-seat read that you’ll be glad you picked up. Ended a little differently than I expected but the ending took nothing away from the book at all. If suspense, thrills, intrigue, drama, and action are what you look for in a book, this is one for you. Get it now, and based on this book, I’ll certainly be looking for more reads by this author. I received a review copy from the publisher and Net Galley, and am sharing my honest, unsolicited opinion.
I received a free electronic ARC of this spine-chilling novel from Netgalley, Wendy Walker, and St. Martin’s Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Wendy Walker writes a novel with tight, fast action, empathetic protagonists, and deeply felt emotions. It is a look at and exposure of the ‘walk away’ disappearances of women, questioning the veracity of that case closure and the sins behind it. Yes, it does happen – once in a blue moon. All those other women were taken and/or killed and buried deep. We do not see Molly’s husband John nor her college-bound son Evan, but they too play a roll in this tale.
It is nigh on to impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys in “Don’t Look For Me”. The characters are all a little bit of both and it doesn’t really shake out until the very end though we will be fairly sure it is one or the other one early on. I love a tale that keeps you guessing…
We see the action from the viewpoint of the mother, Molly, or her 20-year-old daughter Nicole. The Clarke family, is still in crisis following the accidental death of the youngest child, nine-year-old Annie, five years ago to the day. The Clarke’s are perhaps easier to manipulate than would be the average family, and though most are in or have been in counseling the guilt and angst stirred up by that death are still there in every waking moment and some of the sleeping ones as well.
Our scene of the crime is a tiny village on Route 7, Hastings, Connecticut, one of the old industrial hubs of the eastern seaboard, a town with a slowly dying population since the last major employer shut down their pharmaceutical plant. Hastings is isolated from major thoroughfares to and from the larger east coast cities. There is no other traffic on old two-lane Route 7, and her normal mid-trip stop when visiting her son’s college, the Gas and Go, is unexpectedly closed. The weather is dicey, with a category four hurricane in the offing. And Molly is running out of gas…
This book gave me chills up and down my spine right through to the very end. I love books that hook me right off to the point where I don’t want to put the book down – this book was one of those books.
Molly Clarke is a good mom who, through a tragic accident, becomes enemy #1 in her house. Her husband, son, and daughter all blame her for the accident and Molly contemplates just leaving her life behind as she’s driving home during a hurricane . This book alternates between the point of view of Molly and Molly’s 21 year old daughter, Nicole (or Nic). I really liked that, as a reader, you know what Molly is going through and (sort of) where she is, while also getting the perspective of Nic as she tries to piece together where her mom is after Molly’s car is discovered abandoned on the side of the road. Molly’s disappearance forces Nic to reflect on her own role in the accident that she was quick to pin solely on her mom and, even though her own father wants her to stop searching and come home, she vows to search until she has an answer to what happened to her mom.
This was a fast-paced read that frequently had my jaw dropping in surprise. I thought the author did a great job with the unpredictability of this book!
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
I want to say thank you to St. Martin Press and Wendy Walker for an early copy of this gem. Ms. Walker is a new to me author and I am definitely going to be looking up more of Ms. Walker’s books. I was really in the mood for a suspenseful story and Don’t Look for Me did not disappoint. You will be on the edge of your seat. Make sure you open up your schedule and get comfy because you will not want to put this book down. This is an absolute must read!!
I’ve been on a good psychological thriller kick of late and I hope it doesn’t let up.
Don’t Look for Me was the second Wendy Walker book I’ve read and she continuously impresses me with her stories, the originality of them and the way her characters show growth, strength and true grit. This book will leave you turning those pages and you won’t be able to turn them fast enough.
With Don’t Look for Me, you almost get two books in one. You get two POVs. One from Nicole (the daughter) and one from Molly (the mom). These characters are living a life they never thought they would live because of a major tragic event that happened to their family. Because of that event, Molly has been just coasting along in life, knowing that her family blames her for everything and she is determined to love her family through it all. No matter how rough it is for each of them. SO, when her love is not reciprocated, it doesn’t seem unlikely that she may have just “ran away” from it all and cut ties to her family. But is it that easy? Or is there more lurking around the corner?
Wendy Walker takes us on a scary, yet emotional journey. She asks us questions of what we would do in these characters’ situations and she isn’t afraid to go there. She takes a daughter that has basically thrown her life away and puts her in a small town, looking for her mother and not taking no for an answer. She takes a mother and puts her in a very precarious situation and gives her every reason to give up. But she makes these women fighters and that’s what I enjoyed most. Even when they are tricked by people they would never expect, Nic and Molly never give up. Because it’s about love and life and fighting to get to truth and family.
This was a disturbing book that was a true page turner. I was expecting the unexpected, but was still surprised by some jaw dropping twists that were thrown in there at the end. The women were my favorite part of the book and the way they navigated their situations was remarkable. I love a good suspense and I love characters that are smarter than we give them credit for.
If you’re looking for a book that is complex and heavy on suspense and twists and turns, don’t shy away from this one. It’s creepy and utterly addictive until the very last page.
This is the first time in reading this author with I am so glad I came across the story. I do not think I have really read one quite like this one. The promise of suspense lured me but boy did it deliver. There has been people that have I have heard of with the walking away from disappearing for one reason or another. In this one the one who is questioned is Molly Clarke and what is really going on that keeps you in this. I like puzzles and mysteries which that this one brought to the table. It does make you dig in to find the answers to the questions that are brought up. The drama also keeps you in but slowly you inch forward in wonderment. Nicole will have us turning the pages digging into this as it unfolds until we get it all.
Don’t Look For Me is a twisted thriller that will give you whiplash from the plot turns. Molly Clarke goes through life in a fog of grieve for she accidentally caused the death of her youngest child. Her husband and her children seem angry and embarrassed by her. Out of gas and sitting on the side of the road, Molly considers walking away from it all but knows she cannot. A stranger in a pickup stops and offers a ride. Molly is gone and her daughter Nicole seems to be the only one looking for her. In a town where everyone is a suspect, Nic follows every lead even straight into danger. Just when you think you have things figured out, the ending smacks you upside the head in a shocking twist. Pulse pounding and hard to put down, the story is a page turner of a good read. My voluntary, unbiased review is based upon a review copy from Netgalley.
Whoa! This book!! This is an edge-of-your-seat, read-all-night, unputdownable psychological thriller. Molly Clarke disappears one rainy night while driving home. Did she leave on her own because of an unhappy home life or is there something else keeping her away? Her daughter Nicole will not stop searching for her mother and will do anything to find her.
The story is written in the POV of Molly and Nicole and is very well done. I don’t want to say too much about it without giving things away. What I can say is that I thought this book was excellent and highly recommend it.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the review copy.
Spine tingling, suspenseful thriller is exactly what “Don’t Look For Me” is.
Wendy Walker has perfectly written for us a complex tangled web of dark secrets.
I was literally on the edge of my seat wondering what danger or lies were hiding behind the next page.
This novel was an action packed gripping thriller that you will not want to put down until you know the truth!!!
I received a copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for fair and honest review.
This. This is what I have been wanting for a while now. A book that grabs you and doesn’t let go. A story that you can’t tell up from down. A book that will have you guessing all the way through.
My mind was reeling throughout this book. I wasn’t sure who was who. I wasn’t sure if I could handle the answer and the possible ending. There was no way I could put this book down until I had all the pieces. It was like playing connect the dots, but some of the dots weren’t quite easy to find.
The ending. The reader sees the ending coming. It’s given to you a little early… until it isn’t. That little plot twist left me equally parts scratching my head and stunned. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that thrown in right when things were coming to a head. At first I was like, holy…. But then I was like, did the author really need to throw that in? Then I went back to the holy part and back to not sure about it. I warred with myself for a short time. I still don’t know how I felt about it. However, it’s certainly a wrench I didn’t see coming.
Let me add that this book has a very heavy creepy vibe. The creep factor is high with this one. Be “warned”. It’s surely to give you goosebumps and have your heart pounding.
This is the first time that I have read any books by this author but it will definitely not be the last. When Molly Clarke runs out of gas one night after attending her son’s college game, she sets out on foot to get help. Later a note is found saying that she just cannot take it anymore after having tragically and accidentally killing her 9 year old daughter 5 years previously. Her family has treated her like it should never have happened and she was at fault for it. Cruel things have been said and the note tells them to not look for her. However, her daughter, Nicole, the last one to speak to her before she left for the game, doesn’t think that this is what happened and sets out to find out the truth. After all, a mother would not leave her family, no matter how bad they had treated her. OR WOULD SHE. This book had me on the edge of my seat with anticipation and the unexpected twist at the end was totally unexpected. A great book that will keep you wondering what is happening right up til the end.
Molly knew her family never forgave her for her part in the accident that killed her daughter. How could they when she couldn’t forgive herself.
She thought her husband was having an affair, her daughter wouldn’t talk to her, and her son purposely avoided her when she went to see him at school.
One day on her way back from driving to her son’s school but not seeing him, she runs out of gas and a storm hits.
Molly starts to walk to town in the pouring rain and a Good Samaritan stops and asks if she needs a ride. She was hesitant to get in, but she saw a little girl with her father and figured it would be safe.
But was it safe to get in this truck? We found out it definitely wasn’t.
The tension was very “thick” and didn’t stop for the entire book.
Wondering what really was going on and how Molly was going to get out of this situation will have you turning the pages and biting your nails.
Psychological thriller fans will devour this book.
DON’T LOOK FOR ME is chilling, well crafted, and oh so good. I couldn’t put it down.
All I can say is READ IT – this is Wendy Walker’s crowning glory. 5/5
This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I truly enjoyed this book. It’s a fast paced, emotional page turner. An awesome psychological thriller full of mystery and suspense. So many unexpected twists and turns throughout. I recommend this book if you like edge of your seat, pulse pounding thrillers. This review is based on a complimentary pre-release copy from NetGalley.
And…Wendy Walker does it again by delivering another utterly addictive, fast-paced thriller that sinks its teeth in at the beginning and doesn’t release until the end.
Molly Clarke magically vanished one day, and it was presumed that she walked away from her life following her accidentally killing her youngest daughter. But did Molly actually walk away? Molly’s oldest daughter Nicole ‘Nic’ isn’t convinced, and she is determined to get answers and find her mom.
The narration alternates between Molly’s and Nic’s POVs. I think that this worked really well because we got to see how each woman was affected by the trauma their family has experienced (both women are broken) and their subsequent growth throughout the story. It also created a sense of urgency and desperation as time was running around. I found both Molly and Nic compelling and the transitions between their POVs were seamless.
There are definitely lots of twists and turns in this plot, which made for a great ride. Some of the revelations did not come as big surprises, but some just left my jaw on the floor with no regard to my feelings.
Lastly, the narrator (Therese Plummer) for this audiobook was fantastic. She was able to bring both Molly’s and Nic’s character to life without there being any confusion as to which character was which.
Overall, if you love a fast paced, unputdownable thriller then pick this one up!
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing an advanced listening copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.