A while ago I just got a bunch of short stories for a discount. I finally read this, by Lucinda Berry, and realized it fit a square that I needed to fill in for a book bingo I am participating in. That said, this was bonkers, and didn’t really work. I never read the longer novel that was part of this series, but have to say that several characters are a mess and the ending was just weird. And also not realistic.
A Welcome Reunion, takes place several years after the events in the first novel, The Perfect Child. In that, married couple Hannah and Christopher (a nurse and doctor respectively) are dealing with not being able to have a child together. Cue one day a 6 year old child named Janie comes into the ER that has been badly abused. I won’t spoil what happens in that book, but let’s just say Janie made “Damien” look well-adjusted. Now it’s 11 years later and Hannah is in a mind-numbing marriage to Christopher. Janie, now named Hope, is a best-selling author talking about how she triumphed over being kicked out of her adoptive parents’ home, and managed to survive living in a juvenile institution until she was 18.
The book follows the former social worker Piper that was assigned to the case and Hannah.
I honestly got nothing here, Janie is a psychopath and we just get more and more information from Piper and Hannah that Janie has not changed at all and now has a new target in mind. I thought that Christopher was worthless and way too focused in an uncomfortable way on his former adoptive daughter.
The flow of the book really didn’t work because I just didn’t even find it believable that Piper was this focused on Janie. Hannah I definitely see. I just called an audible though at the climatic scene we eventually get that I had to go…this makes zero sense that anyone is doing this.
The ending was abrupt and not very realistic to me.
I read this for Halloween Bingo 2025, “Ephemeral” square.