I Let You Go

Mackintosh, Clare. I Let You Go. New York: Berkeley. 2014. Print.

First Sentences:

The wind flicks wet hair across her face, and she screws up her eyes against the rain. 

Weather like this makes everyone hurry, scurrying past on slippery pavements with chins buried into collars.

Description:

It just took a second. The mother, walking her young son home from school, lets go of his hand so he can run to the house. Instead, he runs into the street, is hit and killed instantly by a speeding car. The driver doesn't even slow down while the mother clutches her broken child in the street. 

So begins Clare Mackintosh's brilliant I Let You Go. Tense, unexpected, nefarious, and full of surprises, the novel grips from these opening pages right to the very end. We hear various people narrate their own chapters about their involvement in this hit-and-run incident and their lives that unfold in the following weeks: the distraught mother who disappears without a word to anyone; the fugitive woman who begins a new life hidden in an isolated Welsh village; the frustrated detectives who neglect their personal lives and families to investigate a case with no clues; and the ominous man seeking the runaway driver for his own personal reasons.

But little by little, author Mackintosh reveals secrets from all these characters, secrets that make readers alternately hate each person and then later sympathize with them. As the story unfolds and the police close in, a capture and confession seem inevitable. But there are plenty of other twists and turns, even danger waiting for each character in the second half of the book right up to the very last pages, my favorite kind of ending.

I dare you to set this book down after the first pages. Put aside a few hours because you will become totally drawn into these lives and the mystery behind the death of one child. I Let You Go is suspense writing at its best.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Hawkins, Paula. The Girl on the Train

A woman riding her daily train to work begins to notice a happy couple in a passing house. But are they so happy? And when one disappears, does the woman come forward with her theories to the police or simply nose around on her own? (previously reviewed here)