Finding You

by Giselle Green

[Leah]

A couple of years ago I read and really enjoyed Giselle Green’s novel Little Miracles. It was a fantastic read, about a little boy who gets kidnapped while on holiday in Spain and his mother, Julie’s, very frantic search to find him, in the belief that he is indeed still alive and well. It was such an interesting, enjoyable novel, although I always thought the ending was somewhat not there. I felt short-changed. I’d read all of these pages, to get an ending like that… It was super disappointing, because I like my endings tied up in a bow, with no wiggle room. So I was quite pleased to open up my email inbox one afternoon to see an email from Giselle asking me if I would like to read and review her sequel to Little Miracles, Finding You, and of course, it was a no-brainer.

Firstly I would like to say, that I believe that every novel that is a sequel to any kind of book should have a page at the beginning that says “Previously on…” much like TV series do, so you can recap what has already happened. Because, sadly, I do not remember books that I read. I do for a while, but when you’ve read as many books as I have, you can get quite forgetful about which was which, so I went into Finding You somewhat blind. I remembered the jist of the story, but the unfortunate ending escaped me. I would absolutely, definitely recommend you read Little Miracles and Finding You one after the other. (I recommend that for ANY series, mind; it’s why I collect all the books in the series before starting, because otherwise I have no idea what’s going on).

You would think that Finding You would be the best kind of sequel to read ever – little Haydn has been found, Julia was justified in her actions to find her boy, and the family are reunited once again. But, sadly, life never turns out that way, and poor Haydn is struggling. He isn’t listening to a word Julia says, isn’t showing any signs of affection, and is wrecking things left, right and centre. Julia and Charlie just don’t know what to do – is he pining for his life in Spain? Does he, God forbid, miss Illusion, the woman who was caring for him when he was found? Or is it something else entirely. But if Julia and Charlie are going to find out, it’s going to strain their relationship to breaking part and they’ll have to try and work out if they’re strong enough to get it back on track, or if some things are just too broken to be fixed.

Finding You is a fascinating insight into what happens after something major like a child going missing. It’s not as if you can just slip back into life as it was, things have clearly changed in Julia, Charlie and Haydn’s lives and I was super sad that that was the case, because if any family in the world deserves a happy ending, it’s these guys, but the hits just kept on coming; again, and again, and again. I don’t know how they coped, because I could barely cope with each new hit, each new revelation, and the growing sense that Haydn had something seriously wrong with him. Poor kid. I knew before his parents did what was wrong, and I just felt awful, but we did eventually get some kind of happy ending for the family – not one Julia ever thought would be possible, or me, for that matter, but we finally got to see how these three wonderful characters finally get their ending. Those who liked Little Miracles, will love being back in the world of Julia, Charlie and Haydn, and Giselle Green has done a fantastic job portraying the reality of what happens when your missing child suddenly isn’t missing any more, at least not in the physical sense…