Abby Mason is walking on a beach in San Francisco with her fiance's six year-old daughter, Emma. She stops to take a picture and when she looks up, Emma is gone. She feels devastated and guilty. Abby and her fiance Jake spend there days separately looking for Emma, drifting apart. Jake eventually comes to believe that Emma is dead and tries to move on. Abby can not and tries everything to remember every detail about that day, looking for any clue fueled by guilt. She becomes obsessed about learning all she can about how memories are stored and retrieved.

The one thing I know is this: there is a girl, her name is Emma, we were walking on the beach. She was there, and then she wasn't. There is no way to retrieve that moment, no way to rewrite the script; I looked away. It cannot be undone.

my review: This novel was beautifully written, moving, and touching. Though the plot is not fast paced, it was a page turner of a book that I read over two nights. It mostly follows Abby as she moves around the city with posters of Emma, tracing and re-tracing her steps throughout the city. Richmond is such a talented writer, that despite the subject matter, the book is not maudlin. It is amazing and really seems to capture the emotions one would feel in this situation; the hopelessness, the imagining the variety of scenarios, the inability to move on as the world passes you by. This is a must read and I also recommend her third novel, No One You Know.

my rating 5/5 ( )

An amazing study into the year following the disappearance of the daughter of the main character's fiancee; the daughter having been walking with the main character on the beach, in dense fog, at the time she disappeared. A surprise ending and totally enthralling story.

Tough subject matter. I could feel Abby's distress over losing her soon to be step-daughter. Kind of a Hollywood ending, but I needed that. ( )

I found this book to be quite a page-turner. Thoroughly describes the gamut of emotions a parent or loved one of a missing child can experience. The ending was a bit of a let-down although not totally unexpected. ( )

I kept reading this because I was curious to find out what happened to the missing girl. I thought the story could have been much better but the author spent way too much time on the year of searching. That year dragged on too long with not much of interest happening. The ending was farfetched. Overall, it was an easy enough book to read that wouldn't be bad for a vacation book but not good enough that I would go out of my way to recommend to someone. ( )