You’ve followed cases, you’ve seen the news. Everyone is happy when a lost/kidnaped child is found and comes home. We all think how great that is and then we move on with our lives. But who really thinks about what comes after? After that child comes home after a month, a year or several years and has to find their place in a family they may not know.

Georgina was stolen from her stroller at a Mardi Gras parade when she was two. For fourteen years, her family had no idea what happened to her. Her parents couldn’t cope together and her younger sister JoJo lived in her shadow being strangled by the overprotectiveness of her mother, Harper.

One day by chance Harper sees a girl working in a coffee shop and she is sure it is her daughter Georgina. It’s been 14 years And she’s been wrong before, horribly embarrassingly wrong. But her mother’s instinct won’t allow her to let it go. And then they all live happily ever after. But do they?

How can Georgina accept this family as hers? She already has a mother, the only mother she’s ever know and is torn between love and hatred for Sharon. How could the woman she’s known and loved her whole life have stolen her from someone else? Her whole life has been a lie. Everything is different now; new house, new school, new religion, new family, even her name is different. She’s caught between wanting to throw herself in Mom Sharon’s arms and never speaking to her again. The reader can’t help the heart wrenching feeling as Georgina comes to term with her new now.

And JoJo is no longer the only child with the appearance of the golden child. It’s her sister’s fault she can’t go anywhere by herself or do anything. How does she adapt to being the little sister to someone she doesn’t know and doesn’t really want to know.

For her parents, their prayers have been answered and their baby is home. But she isn’t their baby anymore. This stranger is someone they don’t know. It’s hard for me to know how parents would react in this situation, and fortunately most of us never have to find out. I think for the most part, it was portrayed pretty accurately. I was so invested in this story and often cringed at the moves Harper made. She was strangling and smothering the poor girl and expected way too much too soon. But it’s likely I would do the same. How do we know how we would react to a lost child coming home; you’ve already missed so much of their life. There isn’t a manual that tells you how to act when you’d kidnaped child comes home.

And Remy, did not care for the man and I will leave it at that. I even mustered up some sympathy for Sharon. What she did will never be ok, but in a weird way I kind of get it. Although I was a little stunned at the nerve of her a time or two.

Couple of things though; why on earth after years of moving around constantly, would Sharon return to scene of the crime? That seems super stupid to me. And also, there is no way something like that would be kept out of the media; they’d have people all over sensationalizing on Georgina’s return. So I didn’t find that part really realistic.

All in all though I loved this book as I did the two other books I have read by this author. She really packs an emotional ride, the reader can’t help being involved with the characters as if we know them. I would give this one a solid 4 1/2 ( )

Finding Georgina by Colleen Faulkner

What if:
*Your toddler was taken from you fourteen years ago?
*You believed she was dead but never truly gave up hoping she was not?
*You believed you had found your child, now sixteen, and she did not at all resemble the memory of her you have kept alive?
*You were faced with integrating you long-lost daughter back into a family with members that have changed – perhaps just as much she has?

How would you cope?
How would the father of your lost child cope?
How would your other-daughter cope?
How would your lost-daughter cope?

This story is told from the viewpoints of
*The mother: Harper
*The unlost-sister: Josephine-Jojo
*The lost-sister: Georgina-Lilla

The emotions are raw, the characters are fully fleshed out, the issues are real, and the dynamics are difficult, the story is not easy reading. The author has done a good job of telling the “what if” story that should have a happy ending for all but makes the reader really look at “what if”…

I had a bit of trouble with Harper…she seemed to be a needy, demanding, controlling sort of helicopter mother. I can see why, in some ways, Remy made the choices he did about his wife but can’t really figure out his reasoning or “needs” in relationship to the family he helped create. I found Jojo to be well portrayed as a somewhat rebellious teenager – not unexpected with Harper as her mother. I found Georgina-Lilla to be an emotionally mature and strong young woman who did her best when she found herself in a very difficult situation. I enjoyed peeking in on the sisters as they learned to know and deal with one another. Having no idea what a REAL family has to contend with if/when they are reconnected with a lost child that was taken so young and kept so many years I am unsure how realistic this story is but it did make me think and ponder and wonder just how I would react if I found myself in any one of the characters’ shoes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars ( )