Today I’m
super excited to participate in the Blog Tour of ‘She’s Not There’ by Joy
Fielding. This is a Thriller that will be published by Bonnier Zaffre on
December 14th. 

‘I think
my real name is Samantha. I think I’m your daughter.’

When Caroline Shipley’s two-year-old daughter disappeared, her whole world came
crashing down.

Now, fifteen years later, Caroline receives a phone-call that could change
everything.

But could this stranger really be her daughter? And what happened all those
years ago to make her vanish without a trace? As Caroline pieces together the
events of that ill-fated holiday, she begins to question whether the answers
could lie dangerously close to home . . .

When I
read the book description of ‘She’s Not There’ I knew this was a book I wanted
to read. I love thrillers, and after all those Romance novels I was definitely
in need of a good thriller.  

In ‘She’s
Not There’ we meet the Shipley family. Caroline, Hunter and their two young daughters
seems like your perfect American family. When Caroline and Hunter are celebrating
their ten year anniversary, they take their family on a vacation in a beautiful
resort in Mexico. Everything seems great. But then their two year old daughter
Samantha disappears without a trace from her bed in the resort. And fifteen
years later, everything is changed for Caroline. 

‘She’s Not
There’ is an easy to read book. The writing is good to follow and makes you
want to keep on reading. I for one didn’t want to stop reading from the very
first page. My mind kept going almost by it’s own. Where is Samantha? How could
she have disappeared? I had a lot of questions and I needed to have them answered.
Joy Fielding definitely did a good job in keeping me hooked. 

The
chapters in ‘She’s Not There’ change from fifteen years ago to the present. And
this was something I definitely enjoyed. It just had an extra charm and
fascination to it. Being able to read what happened years ago and how much life
had changed now, really made this into an even better read.

The funny
thing is, which made this read very interesting even now when I’ve finished it,
is that I didn’t like almost all the characters. Yes, that right. And this isn’t
something that happens a lot to me. Caroline was kind, but really could have
been a little stronger and a lot tougher. There were lots of moments in this
book I was yelling at her to just tell her oldest daughter to behave. Caroline’s
oldest daughter Michelle? Horrible. Horrible as a kid but even more as a teen.
Man I disliked that girl. I even yelled at her, which made for a very funny
scene when my husband wondered if I was going crazy. And then Hunter? Blegh.. I
hate man like him. And don’t even start about the grandmother! 

But even though
I didn’t really like the characters, this book kept me hooked from the
beginning till the end. It wasn’t as thrilling as I thought it would be. I had
a pretty good idea about what was going to happen early on. But still, this
book was a very nice read and I enjoyed it. 

Joy
Fielding (née Tepperman; born March 18, 1945) is a Canadian novelist and
actress. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, she graduated from the University of Toronto in 1966,
with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. As Joy Tepperman, she had a
brief acting career, appearing in the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1965) and in an
episode of Gunsmoke. She later changed her last name to Fielding (after Henry
Fielding) and began writing novels.
Fielding is also the screenwriter of the television film Golden Will: The
Silken Laumann Story.

At the age of 8, Joy Tepperman wrote her first story and sent it into a local
magazine, and at age 12 sent in her first TV script, however both were
rejected. She had a brief acting career, eventually giving it up to write full-time
in 1972. She has published to date 22 novels, two of which were converted into
film. Fielding’s process of having an idea to the point the novel is finished
generally takes a year, the writing itself taking four to eight months. Joy
Fielding sets most of her novels in American cities such as Boston and Chicago.
She has said that she prefers to set her novels in “big American cities,
[as the] landscape seems best for [her] themes of urban alienation and loss of
identity. Fielding is a Canadian citizen. Her husband’s name is Warren, and
they have two daughters, Annie and Shannon. They have property in Toronto,
Ontario, as well as Palm Beach, Florida.

Fielding had an interview with the Vancouver Sun in 2007, just after her
publication of Heartstopper. She enjoys catching readers off guard with the
endings of her stories, but insists that “[it] isn’t what her fiction is
about”, but rather more about the development of her characters.
Discussing her novels with the Toronto Star in 2008, she said “I might not
write fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are
good. My dialog is good. And my stories are really involving. I’m writing
exactly the kind of books I like to write. And they’re the kind of books I like
to read. They’re popular commercial fiction. That’s what they are.”

For more
information about Joy Fielding please visit her website. Or visit her on
Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

I received this book from Bonnier Publishing in exchange for my honest review.