Sometimes Jo still wakes suddenly, thinking she can hear Lauren's cry. Although twelve years have passed since her baby daughter was abducted, photos of the child continue to arrive by post with the words, I Still Have Her, scrawled across the back. The police think it's the work of a hoaxer but Jo has always believed them to be genuine - and until there is some hard evidence to the contrary, she will always hold on to the belief that Lauren is still alive. But if the pictures really do come from the kidnapper it means that they have been keeping track of Jo's movements all these years - and recently Jo has begun to feel as if she is being watched - and that whoever has her daughter is getting closer.
Is Jo's husband right to dismiss her fears as paranoia, or might Jo herself be in danger? As her life begins to unravel Jo fears that the truth may lie in older events; in a half-forgotten childhood world, scarred by rumours of insanity and murder.
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[Harry half walked, half ran up the lane]***
(C & R Crime, 1 January 2011, 331 pages, ebook, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2019, a book with a question in the title, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I found this book really heart-breaking at times. I've read a lot of books about missing children and while some are original some are just pale echoes of each other. Why Don't You Come For Me? is one of the good ones. Jo's pain is very hard to read at times. Who can be torturing her by sending her the postcards and constantly reopening and an old wound and making it bleed again? I can't imagine how awful it must be to lose a child and not know whether your child is dead or alive. I read in a book once that even finding your child's body would be better than not finding anything because it allows some closure. Jo and her husband had no such closure. My heart went out to Jo so many times. Things gets pretty intense towards the end of the novel when Jo starts to believe she knows the awful truth about what happened to Lauren, truth that she has no proof to back up and nobody will believe. The book lost one star because the shock ending didn't sit well with me.
