Bring Me Back – B.A. Paris

St. Martin's Press | Hardcover | June 19, 2018

Twelve years ago Layla, the love of Finn’s life, disappeared while they were vacationing in France. He loved her. She loved him. He had proposed to her. He doesn’t know of any reason she would want to run away from him. He would never do anything to hurt her. But of course, the so-called facts he gave the authorities are only partly true.

In the present-day Finn is a rich, successful businessman. He has fallen in love again—with Layla’s older sister, Ellen. Their life is quiet, consistent, picturesque. But while on the surface Finn seems to have moved on, he has never truly gotten over Layla and knows, deep down, the reason he is marrying Ellen is that she is the closest thing to Layla he will ever have. So when Finn starts receiving Russian dolls in the mail and getting cryptic emails from the mysterious Rudolph Hill he begins to hope—and believe—Layla just might be alive after all and cannot rest until she is found.

Paris hits the page sprinting in this psychological thriller and never lets go. With each chapter she peels back another layer of Finn’s past; revealing the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything else in between. Thrillers live or die by their layers and Paris tears them back and lays them down like a pro.

But these layers are also the novel’s undoing. For with each chapter we learn just how obsessive, possessive, and abusive Finn can be and it’s anything but endearing. No matter how hard Paris may try, his flaws leave us feeling so skeeved that we hope he gets his comeuppance, which is why it is so vexing to watch Layla and Ellen—who grew up with an abusive father—fight for Finn’s affection and hope that he will be able to save them. Not even Paris’s plot twists are enough to make up for the opportunity she has squandered with Layla and Ellen’s relationship, their motivations, and character development.