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I Found You A Novel Lisa Jewell 9781501154591 Books

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I Found You A Novel Lisa Jewell 9781501154591 Books

Lisa Jewell is a gem. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I’m fussy about mysteries. Few of them, in my opinion, hit the proper balance of plot, character and setting. So I was thrilled to discover a writer who, though she’s been around for some time (this is her 13th book), has so far been known mostly in the UK.

This is the second of Jewell’s novels that I’ve read; the first, THE GIRLS IN THE GARDEN, was long on characterization and atmosphere but a bit short on plot, with an ambiguous ending that didn’t quite satisfy me. I FOUND YOU has a much more coherent and suspenseful structure.

Jewell juggles three narrative strands. One features a fortyish single mother/artist named Alice Lake, who has moved with her three kids and three dogs from London to Ridinghouse Bay, a town on the North Sea. Alice is impulsive, casual-verging-on-sloppy, and very lonely; she is also kind, sexy, humorous, intuitive and talented (her cleverly conceived business is creating collages out of maps). A rescuer of people and dogs as well as the long-distance caretaker of her Alzheimer’s-stricken parents --- she keeps an eye on them via a webcam feed on her iPad --- she has a definite altruistic streak.

One day she notices a man sitting on the beach in the rain. She doesn’t know him, she has no reason to trust him, but she brings him a coat and then --- knowing this is foolish --- lets him stay in her house. The man, whom she calls Frank, has amnesia; he has no idea who he is. As he and Alice walk around the town, however, fragments of his past begin to come back --- and a mutual attraction blossoms. Even her least friendly dog is drawn to him (“You must be a good guy…. Dogs always know”); even her adolescent son and little daughter like him (her teenage daughter isn’t so sure). Their romance is tender, unsentimental, grown-up and thoroughly believable.

The second thread involves a just-married woman named Lily Monrose, whose husband has disappeared. Lily is from the Ukraine, which is where she met Carl. Seemingly, they are an ideal, if isolated couple --- their relationship, unlike Alice and Frank’s, has a sort of airless perfection --- and then, without warning, he vanishes. When the police investigate, they find that Carl’s passport is a sophisticated fake. Betrayed, deserted and a stranger in a strange land, Lily sets out to find him.

Is Frank really Carl? That’s what the reader might think, but a certain ambiguity emerges when Jewell introduces a third strand, a flashback to 1993, 23 years ago. Again we are in Ridinghouse Bay, but it is summer, and a family of four --- including a teenage sister and brother, Kirsty and Graham, known as Gray --- is on vacation. On the beach they meet a handsome but frighteningly intense young man, Mark, who is instantly besotted with Kirsty. When she rebuffs him, he becomes violent, and an idyllic vacation turns tragic. So perhaps Frank could be Gray? And what happened to Kirsty? The cruel past starts to play itself out in the present as Lily’s search for her husband leads her to Ridinghouse Bay, where she encounters Alice and Frank.

While I found Alice and Lily’s stories riveting, the 1993 sequences are a bit melodramatic. Mark is obviously disturbed, and disturbing. Gray is worried sick about his sister, but then makes decisions that put her in danger. The action, in short, doesn’t feel in sync with the characters. Moreover, the convergence of the three stories in the last third of the book seems contrived. A friend of Carl’s is unbelievably helpful to Lily for no good reason; an obliging investigative reporter shows up as needed; and Mark’s aunt, who has kept his secrets all these years, conveniently decides not to anymore.

Yet the people who inhabit the present-day narratives in I FOUND YOU are strikingly, poignantly real. The twin figures of Alice and Lily --- very different, but equally brave in their fashion --- dominate the book, though it’s Frank and Carl who are ostensibly the main actors. The women push to bring the men’s true character to light, even at the risk of their hearts and their futures.

When Frank, fearing he has done violence to somebody in his unremembered past, urges Alice to take him to the police and leave him there, she has a glimpse of the end of their brief, glowing affair, “and she doesn’t like the look of it at all. It looks cruel and mean. It looks like her, sitting alone in her room, cutting up maps to make art for people to give to people they love. It looks like her watching TV on a crumb-strewn sofa, surrounded by stinky dogs and moody teenagers.... It looks like this beautiful man with his autumn hair and his gentle eyes and his warm breath and his strong hands, walking out of her life….”

The identity conundrum apart, this novel is also a marvelous love story. Actually, I think every really good mystery deals in something other than crime and punishment, something larger and perhaps redemptive. I FOUND YOU is not just a whodunit; it’s about families, strangers, loss, loneliness and memory. Anybody who likes character-driven thrillers should try it.

Meanwhile, I’ll be on that website beginning with a lowercase a, seeking out more of Jewell’s work. Having a new suspense writer on my must-read list is great --- like money in the bank, like cake in the pantry, like a new dress waiting to be worn.

Reviewed by Katherine B. Weissman


Tags : I Found You: A Novel [Lisa Jewell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>“Readers of Liane Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Ruth Ware will love. — Library Journal</i> (starred review)</b><BR> <BR><b>“Jewell’s novel explores the space between going missing and being lost….how the plots intersect and finally collide is one of the great thrills of reading Jewell’s book. She ratchets up the tension masterfully,Lisa Jewell,I Found You: A Novel,Atria Books,1501154591,Contemporary Women,Family Life,Thrillers - Suspense,Amnesia,Amnesia;Fiction.,Man-woman relationships,Missing persons,Missing persons;Fiction.,Suspense fiction.,Thrillers (Fiction),ENGLISH MYSTERY & SUSPENSE FICTION,England,FICTION Family Life General,FICTION Thrillers Suspense,FICTION Women,Fiction,Fiction-Suspense,FictionFamily Life - General,FictionThrillers - Suspense,GENERAL,General Adult,United States,women's fiction; best British female authors; the house we grew up in; Lisa Jewel; Jojo Moyes; Liane Moriarty; wife; wives; domestic drama; domestic suspense; motherhood; single mom; the third wife; the girls in the garden; amnesia; single mother; Seaside; dual narrative; memory loss; Surrey; East Yorkshire; investigative reporter; missing person; Paula Hawkins; then she was gone; hard to put down; beach read; twisty; great plot; psychological thriller

I Found You A Novel Lisa Jewell 9781501154591 Books Reviews

"I Found You" by Lisa Jewell is a great mystery and it doesn't insult your measure of believability. Three lonely people meet when their lives are in upheaval and learn they are also connected by a haunting 20-year-old mystery. At first, when I started the book, I wasn't sure I could get into it but when the 1993 segment of the book was revealed, I was hooked. The author brings two story-lines together and also weaves a 1993 murder into the mix and it comes out flawlessly. The background story proceeds at breakneck speed while the current day story unfolds at a slower pace. The writing was very good and though this is my first Lisa Jewell book, I am now a fan.
The only problem with this book is that I didn't want to put it down. From the first page, the descriptions had me completely immersed in the setting. I love beach towns and this sounds like a place I'd want to visit. Then I met the characters, who sounded so real that I couldn't help but care about them. The author kept me guessing about who "Frank" was, almost right up to the reveal. The varying points of view between chapters helped keep the mystery going and only added layers of complexity as to his identity. This book was part mystery, part romance, and part tragedy, adding up to a story I could not stop thinking about!
This book alternates between three different stories.

Alice Lake, main character in the first story, lives in a coastal village in the U.K. called Ridinghouse Bay with her three children and three dogs. She's made some bad decisions in her life. Each of her kids have a different father, and good riddance to all three of the blokes. Alice's life is rather chaotic and messy. But she loves her kids, and they love her. There's a basic goodness about her. She would give the shirt off her back to someone in need.

And that's just what she does when she sees a man sitting on the beach one day in the rain. He looks cold and lost. When she notices he's still there several hours later, she takes a coat out to him, and learns he has amnesia. He can't tell her his name, or where he came from. Or when he last had a meal. Alice knows she shouldn't get involved. He could be an axe murderer. But, how can she leave him there? In spite of knowing it will give the village people more fodder for gossip, but she takes him in, feeds him, and decides to give him shelter for a day or two. Just until she can help him finding his identity....

In the second story, a young, beautiful woman named Lily Montose is impatiently waiting for her husband of two weeks to come home. She is from the Ukraine, where they'd met only a couple months before. After a whirlwind romance, Carl convinced her to marry him and return with him to London. They moved into a small flat, where she spends every day alone while he goes off to work. He returns promptly each evening, where he's the perfect husband, lavishing her with attention. They don't go out to eat, nor does he introduce her to family and friends. He tells her he just wants to keep her to himself for a time.

But now he's very late coming home from work. And, as the minutes and hours goes by, Lilly realises she's in a foreign country, and doesn't know a single person other than her husband. And now he's disappeared. She calls the police, but when she's unable to provide the officer with any information about her husband, they become dismissive, thinking she's a mail order bride and her husband is off having dalliance with some other woman. When she gives them her husband's passport, a computer search shows the passport is fake. The man named Carl Montose, doesn't exist...

The third story takes place 23 years earlier, in 1993, in Ridinghouse Bay. The Ross family is spending their annual holiday here, staying in the same cottage near the ocean that they do every year. Dad, mom, and teenagers Gray and Kirsty, are on the beach getting some sun. Gray becomes annoyed when he notices a guy next to them ogling his 14 year old sister. He really gets annoyed when the guy has the gall to introduce himself to them, and start a conversation. His name is Mark Tate, and he points out his aunt's house, high on the hill behind them. It's the biggest and most beautiful home in sight. Gray is alarmed when Mark asks if Kirsty would like to take a walk with him along the beach, and his parents don't object. Something about this guy really seems off to Gray. Mark appears to be at least 5 years older than Kirsty, and is way too interested in her, but his parents don't pick up on it. And Gray watches helplessly as his younger sister walks off with him....

Each of the three stories is interesting in itself, but the reader has to wait until near the end of the book before the connection between the stories is revealed. I enjoyed this mystery suspense novel from beginning to end.

I love how this author writes. This is the second book by Lisa Jewell I've read, and I now have a new favorite author. She's nudged Kate Morton, Tana French, Liane Moriorty, and Kristen Hannah down a notch.

Five stars. I'd give this book more if I could.
Just fabulous, my favourite book I've read this year. I loved turning every page to uncover more about these characters, and rather than rushing I took my time savouring each page as I knew the journey would be over soon. My first Lisa Jewell novel, I Found You will definitely not be my last.
Lisa Jewell is a gem. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I’m fussy about mysteries. Few of them, in my opinion, hit the proper balance of plot, character and setting. So I was thrilled to discover a writer who, though she’s been around for some time (this is her 13th book), has so far been known mostly in the UK.

This is the second of Jewell’s novels that I’ve read; the first, THE GIRLS IN THE GARDEN, was long on characterization and atmosphere but a bit short on plot, with an ambiguous ending that didn’t quite satisfy me. I FOUND YOU has a much more coherent and suspenseful structure.

Jewell juggles three narrative strands. One features a fortyish single mother/artist named Alice Lake, who has moved with her three kids and three dogs from London to Ridinghouse Bay, a town on the North Sea. Alice is impulsive, casual-verging-on-sloppy, and very lonely; she is also kind, sexy, humorous, intuitive and talented (her cleverly conceived business is creating collages out of maps). A rescuer of people and dogs as well as the long-distance caretaker of her Alzheimer’s-stricken parents --- she keeps an eye on them via a webcam feed on her iPad --- she has a definite altruistic streak.

One day she notices a man sitting on the beach in the rain. She doesn’t know him, she has no reason to trust him, but she brings him a coat and then --- knowing this is foolish --- lets him stay in her house. The man, whom she calls Frank, has amnesia; he has no idea who he is. As he and Alice walk around the town, however, fragments of his past begin to come back --- and a mutual attraction blossoms. Even her least friendly dog is drawn to him (“You must be a good guy…. Dogs always know”); even her adolescent son and little daughter like him (her teenage daughter isn’t so sure). Their romance is tender, unsentimental, grown-up and thoroughly believable.

The second thread involves a just-married woman named Lily Monrose, whose husband has disappeared. Lily is from the Ukraine, which is where she met Carl. Seemingly, they are an ideal, if isolated couple --- their relationship, unlike Alice and Frank’s, has a sort of airless perfection --- and then, without warning, he vanishes. When the police investigate, they find that Carl’s passport is a sophisticated fake. Betrayed, deserted and a stranger in a strange land, Lily sets out to find him.

Is Frank really Carl? That’s what the reader might think, but a certain ambiguity emerges when Jewell introduces a third strand, a flashback to 1993, 23 years ago. Again we are in Ridinghouse Bay, but it is summer, and a family of four --- including a teenage sister and brother, Kirsty and Graham, known as Gray --- is on vacation. On the beach they meet a handsome but frighteningly intense young man, Mark, who is instantly besotted with Kirsty. When she rebuffs him, he becomes violent, and an idyllic vacation turns tragic. So perhaps Frank could be Gray? And what happened to Kirsty? The cruel past starts to play itself out in the present as Lily’s search for her husband leads her to Ridinghouse Bay, where she encounters Alice and Frank.

While I found Alice and Lily’s stories riveting, the 1993 sequences are a bit melodramatic. Mark is obviously disturbed, and disturbing. Gray is worried sick about his sister, but then makes decisions that put her in danger. The action, in short, doesn’t feel in sync with the characters. Moreover, the convergence of the three stories in the last third of the book seems contrived. A friend of Carl’s is unbelievably helpful to Lily for no good reason; an obliging investigative reporter shows up as needed; and Mark’s aunt, who has kept his secrets all these years, conveniently decides not to anymore.

Yet the people who inhabit the present-day narratives in I FOUND YOU are strikingly, poignantly real. The twin figures of Alice and Lily --- very different, but equally brave in their fashion --- dominate the book, though it’s Frank and Carl who are ostensibly the main actors. The women push to bring the men’s true character to light, even at the risk of their hearts and their futures.

When Frank, fearing he has done violence to somebody in his unremembered past, urges Alice to take him to the police and leave him there, she has a glimpse of the end of their brief, glowing affair, “and she doesn’t like the look of it at all. It looks cruel and mean. It looks like her, sitting alone in her room, cutting up maps to make art for people to give to people they love. It looks like her watching TV on a crumb-strewn sofa, surrounded by stinky dogs and moody teenagers.... It looks like this beautiful man with his autumn hair and his gentle eyes and his warm breath and his strong hands, walking out of her life….”

The identity conundrum apart, this novel is also a marvelous love story. Actually, I think every really good mystery deals in something other than crime and punishment, something larger and perhaps redemptive. I FOUND YOU is not just a whodunit; it’s about families, strangers, loss, loneliness and memory. Anybody who likes character-driven thrillers should try it.

Meanwhile, I’ll be on that website beginning with a lowercase a, seeking out more of Jewell’s work. Having a new suspense writer on my must-read list is great --- like money in the bank, like cake in the pantry, like a new dress waiting to be worn.

Reviewed by Katherine B. Weissman