Book Review: If You Were Here by Alafair Burke

Magazine journalist McKenna Jordan is chasing the latest urban folktale—the story of an unidentified woman who heroically pulled a teenage boy from the subway tracks seconds before the arrival of an oncoming train. When McKenna locates a video snippet that purportedly captures the incident, she thinks she has an edge on the competition scrambling to identify the mystery heroine.

McKenna is shocked to discover that the woman in the video bears a strong resemblance to Susan Hauptmann, a close friend—and a classmate of her husband’s at West Point—who vanished without a trace ten years earlier. The NYPD concluded that the nomadic Susan—forced by her father into an early military life, floundering as an adult for a fixed identity—simply started over again somewhere else.

But McKenna has always believed that the truth went deeper than the police investigation ever reached and sees Susan’s resurfacing as a sign that she wants to be found. What might have been a short-lived Metro story sends the former prosecutor turned reporter on a twisting search that leads across New York City—and to dark secrets buried dangerously close to home. . . .

I was happy to recieve a copy of If You Were Here by Alafair Burke because it had been far too long since I read a crime thriller, and the blurbs on the ARC promised I was in for a book by a phenomnal author. 

The blurbs were right. If You Were Here was fantastic. Here's where I admit I am a total crime novel snob. They are one of my favorite generes to read, but if the book is too predictable or too formulaic or trying too hard to throw fifty red herrings at you all at once, I tend to toss them aside. If You Were Here was none of those things. It was a page-turner not because the plot was so convuluted that I would never be able to pick out any suspects; the twists and turns were interesting and original. I never would have guessed the ending, which is just the way I like it, and I had a hard time putting it down, which is definitely the way I like it. I have about zero minutes in a given day to read, yet I zoomed through the 350+ pages in two days. 

Interesting characters, original plot, and killer suspense. This is one to pick up. 

I was given an Advanced Reader Copy of If You Were Here by TLC Book Tours, but was not compensated for my review. The opinions expressed are my own.