Review - 'I Found You' by Lisa Jewell

I Found You follows three convergent story lines. Alice finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house with no memory of himself or how he got there, and invites him in. Lily is a newlywed who grows anxious when her husband does not return home after work one day. And two decades ago, teenagers Gray and Kirsty are holidaying with their parents when a troubled young man starts paying attention to Kirsty.

This book starts off so strong. Even with three story lines, it seamlessly introduced all the characters and drew me in immediately. Lisa Jewell has a real knack for crafting interesting characters that feel real and believable, and I find her writing style to be engrossing.

But for me, the story started feeling flat towards the middle when the characters began to behave oddly. Alice clings to the man with amnesia. Her daughter had to be the voice of reason and tell her that if she had found a dog, she would have done everything she could to reunite it with its family, but she is trying to keep this man from returning to his regular life. Gray and Kirsty did not trust or even like the young man, but they keep agreeing to go hang out with him. And Lily is self-centered, demanding that everyone just drop what they are doing to help her. It's frustrating to read about people so lacking in awareness.

Another issue is that the climax of the book is dragged out, page by page, with lots of interspersed story lines in between. When you stretch an emotionally charged scene out over a hundred pages, a little bit here, then a little bit later, it loses a lot of its momentum. At some point, I just don't care anymore and want this sort of emotional manipulation to be over and for the story to move on.

The twists in here are fine, though not completely surprising, but I don't mind that. The ending does wrap up everything, though maybe a little too neatly. Everyone gets a happy ending, which feels a bit contrived. And for how long the middle part of the story was stretched out, the wrap up feels rushed to me.

In the end, this was a middle-of-the-road read for me. I enjoyed Lisa Jewell's writing and the three converging story lines were interesting, but I found the second half of the book to be too drawn out and contrived for me to totally buy-in.

Readaroo Rating: 3 stars