IMPOSTER by K. LARSEN :: REVIEW

Standalone mystery suspense thriller.

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Reviewed by Jenny & Gitte

“Sometimes the missing aren’t meant to be found.”

What a gripping read! For us, this wasn’t just a suspenseful mystery thriller, it was also a story explored how healing can come from the most tragic and awful of circumstances. How can prosper from bad. Told in varying pov’s with seamless past/present switches, we couldn’t wait to uncover the whole story! To unveil the toll secrets, lies and deceit could weigh on a family!

‘A mother knew if her baby’s heart was still beating somewhere out there, and Helen never felt the loss of Sophie in the deepest recesses of her heart.’

It was the phone call that turned a family’s world upside down. A parent’s worst nightmare. Helen and Sam Anderson appeared to be living the idyllic life. Helen was a stay at home Mum devoted to her children. Sam a hardworking and devoted father to their children Cora (11), Sophie (7) and Sam’s son Shane (15) from a previous marriage.

Helen Anderson lived her worst moment as a mother when her 7 year old daughter, Sophie went missing after being dropped off by her father for a sleepover at a neighbour’s house. Our hearts skipped a beat as K Larsen so brilliantly captured the sheer terror, panic and palpable hopelessness Helen felt at that moment, and during the aftermath of Sophie’s disappearance. We felt it all!

“Where’s our baby?” she rasped. Fear clutched at her chest as she started crying. She let out a wailing cry. “Make this go away!”

But what happened to Sophie? Was she murdered? Kidnapped? Is she still alive? After ten years of grieving yet never giving up hope that her daughter being alive, Helen’s life takes a turn when her other daughter, Cora, now 21 calls to say she had stumbled across Sophie (now 18) shivering, cold, undernourished behind a dumpster.

As the family welcome Sophie back into their lives, there are questions they so desperately need answered yet Sophie is unwilling to discuss what had transpired in her life since that fateful day.

We have to say we picked the direction of this story very quickly, but then again, we don’t feel the author was hiding it in any way given the title and as we had recently watched a documentary with the same theme, we knew what to expect plot wise, so that wasn’t a revelation for us.

What was a revelation and what kept us voraciously turning the pages, were the what’s and why for’s that we desperately needed answers to. Where had Sophie been, why is she so reluctant to talk about the ten years of her disappearance? And more importantly was everything as it seemed?

‘Good people did bad things and bad people did good things. Black and white, somewhere along the years, mixed and made gray and now the gray was all that remained.”

K Larsen is a master manipulator and fabulous suspenseful author. She has woven a story of pain, loss, grief and showcased how closure and healing can come from the most tragic and painful of situations.  We understood the reasoning and actions from both sides. The desire to belong, the need to accept and we felt the raw emotion experienced by this family. It was addictive reading that’s for sure. Who is lying? Who is hiding a secret and is anyone who they say they are? You’ll have to read and find out!

4 Stars