Digital Reads Reviews

Many thanks to Noelle Holten and publisher Bookouture for my spot on this Blog Tour.

A story which was quite different, a love story but not quite, a thriller with a missing child but not really, which was both in the past and in the present, this twisted my insides with the emotions.

In 1990, coming from a sad, broken home, father addicted to pills and mother too selfish, Dell fell in love with Mason and became pregnant. She needed help, and finding none, she gave her baby up for adoption and with a broken heart, Dell left town and opened up her own place as a psychic, a fortune teller. A year later, July 1991, her mother came to her one day and informed that her 5 month old baby was missing.

The debut by Kelly Heard was beautiful. It wasn’t a thriller but a journey. It was all about Dell as moved through her past and into the present. Trying to find her baby, she found herself and understood the circumstances better. Mason, as her love interest, stood steadfast by her even when she thought she was alone. Circumstances, some of them really dreadful, made her distrustful. I could understand that.

Dell’s mother had an accident before she could reveal the details, so Dell had to go back home and find the frayed threads of her life and join them together, make them strong, to find her baby. Her relatives and loved ones added many emotions to this prose by their subtle actions.

Getting to know Dell was my journey too. I got to see that sometimes life got so overwhelming and lonely, that Dell had to go away to come home. There was a depth and poignancy in the writing which kept me hooked.

It was a slow starter and took me time to understand her, but the story slowly unfurled the truth. Emotions weaved into the story were sometimes subtle, and most times obvious. Dell was an interesting character, and seeing life through her and getting to know her made this my midnight read.

Did she find her baby, you ask? You have to read the book to know the real truth.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley and publisher, and this is my journey into its pages, straight from the heart!! STRICTLY HONEST AND UNBIASED.

All my reviews can be read here

Counting things in threes usually calms Dell’s crippling anxiety—the passionflower vine along the shop wall, the jimsonweed by the roadside, the sleeping valley in the distance—but when her baby daughter goes missing, her world shatters completely.

1979, Virginia. Growing up amongst the sprawling valleys and forests of Blyth, beautiful young Dell has always had a natural intuition for how to fix other people’s hurts, if not her own. She hopes for a better future, although thanks to her alcoholic father and narcissistic mother, happiness seems far out of her reach. She certainly could never have predicted holding her baby girl for the first time, and the life-changing, powerful love she would feel when she did.

Even as a heartbroken single mother in a small town riddled with gossips, she suddenly feels that she can do this. She can raise her daughter. But when she turns to her own mother for help, her mother convinces her that the child would be better off with another family. With nobody to fight her corner, Dell must watch the local church take the baby away, leaving her alone and completely devastated.

Dell feels there’s nothing left for her in her tiny hometown but heartache and shattered dreams, and so she flees, vowing never to go back. It finally seems like luck is on her side when she finds a small shop for rent, overlooking the peaceful Shenandoah Valley. This quiet corner of paradise feels like the perfect place to heal and use her gift to help others heal, too. Until Dell’s mother tracks her down to deliver crushing news—her baby girl is missing.

Dell knows she won’t find out where her child is in the stars or on her palms. Instead, she must do the one thing she promised she never would. She must return to Blyth. Will what Dell finds there finally heal her fragile heart, or break it into a thousand irreparable pieces?

Publication Date: October 2019

Publisher: Bookouture