If You Find Me (Emily Murdoch)

First of all, thank you to St. Marten's Press For sending me my very first advanced readers copy of a book to review! I feel honored to get the chance to do so especially for such a wonderful book. That said...

Carey and Jenessa's story mostly broke my heart. At times, especially in the beginning, I would mentally refer back to the story Flowers in the Attic. Their mother had essentially locked them up in their situation. Whether the setting was an attic or a camper deep in the forest, they essentially had no way out.
The sisters' mentally ill mother has, for reasons not fully revealed, taken the girls away from everything they had ever known. They now live in a tiny camper deep inside a national forest.

Until the day a social worker and Carey's father show up to get them, the girls' lives consisted of living off of the land, dealing with their mothers increasing absences, fending off strangers in the night and worrying about where their next meal will come from.

Carey has had to grow up much earlier than the average girl: learning to shoot a gun, protecting her little sister, and singing her Winnie the Pooh nursery rhymes when her own mother was not there to do it for her, (and honestly never cared to do it when she was). On the "white star night", however, Carey learns things that no one should ever have to.

When they have been rescued, the girls must learn what it is like to be in society again. Can they ever truly be reintegrated? Or will they find themselves craving the solitude that the forest provided them? Will Carey take Jenessa and run? And what is the real truth about why their mother took them away? Was her father what her mother proclaimed him to be? Was he better? Or even worse? All of these questions make Carey doubt herself: her ability to adapt to and accept her new life. Her biggest secret, one that she feels will ostracize her from her newfound family and her little sister, is her Achille's Heel and threatens to break her down if she doesn't tell someone.

Abuse is abuse. Whether it happens in the forest, an attic, your neighbor's house or your own, it cannot be ignored.

Five stars well deserved. If I didn't now own a copy, I would have bought one!