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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
A lot
Violence is late and decisive rather than constant; Kirkus frames the book as a slow tightening rather than a bloodbath
Language
A lot
Regular strong profanity in the contemporary Seattle setting
Sexual Content
A lot
Sexual content is a flagged reader warning, tied to the affair storyline
Substance Use
Some
Alcohol and prescription sedatives feature in Marin's coping
Emotional Intensity
Infidelity and gaslighting are the flagged warnings, but reviewers say the book's real weight is parental grief — how far a parent goes to make the disappearance mean something, and what refusing to heal costs
What this book is about
Marin Machado's four-year-old was snatched in a crowd at Pike Place. The case has gone cold, her marriage has gone quiet, and the investigator she pays to keep looking turns up Derek's twentysomething girlfriend. Hillier turns a missing-child novel into a study of what a grieving mother will authorise.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Child abduction and sustained parental grief
Infidelity
Reader Verification
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