Review: Fragile by Lisa Unger

Fragile by Lisa Unger

About the Book: Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.

Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.

“I know how a moment can spiral out of control,” Jones says to a shocked Maggie as he searches Rick’s room for incriminating evidence. “How the consequences of one careless action can cost you everything.”
As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear. This thrilling novel about one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds will leave readers asking, How well do I know the people I love? and How far would I go to protect them?

Read some excerpts from the story

About the Author:
Lisa Unger is an award winning New York Times, USA Today and international bestselling author. Her novels have been published in over 26 countries around the world.

She was born in New Haven, Connecticut (1970) but grew up in the Netherlands, England and New Jersey. A graduate of the New School for Social Research, Lisa spent many years living and working in New York City. She then left a career in publicity to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time author. She now lives in Florida with her husband and daughter.
Her writing has been hailed as "masterful" (St. Petersburg Times), "sensational" (Publishers Weekly) and "sophisticated" (New York Daily News) with "gripping narrative and evocative, muscular prose" (Associated Press).
Here's What I Think:
This is my first experience with Lisa Unger, but it definitely won't be my last. Her words flow so easily through the the twists and turns of this stream of events. She manages to essentially maintain two stories that only really come to cross pass as the truth is revealed. Really book explores just how much our lives are intertwined with the people around us whether we see it at the time or not. Obviously this will become more extreme and apparent in a small town like The Hollows, but it was not in an exhausting way. The story is so well written, it could take place in any regular suburban town, in any high school. With each new twisting addition to the story, you mind is forced to bend to the vivid images Unger creates an eerily plausible story that pulls you into a "Whodunit" mentality,  with out the cliches of a usual mystery. I really enjoyed this book (stayed up till 2am to finish the last 80 pages!) and I think many of the regular readers of this blog would as well!

Disclaimer: Although I did receive a copy of this book from BookSpark PR, I was in other way compensated to publish this post. These are my real and honest thoughts about this title.