Holly Brown lives with her husband and toddler daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she's a practicing marriage and family therapist. She is the author of the novel Don't Try to Find Me, and her blog, "Bonding Time," is featured on the mental health website PsychCentral.com.
Don't Try To Find Me: A Novel
by Holly Brown
Paperback
$14.99
- ISBN-13: 9780062305855
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 04/07/2015
- Pages: 384
- Sales rank: 136,195
- Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
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When a fourteen-year-old runs away, her parents turn to social media to find her—launching a public campaign that will expose their darkest secrets and change their family forever, in this suspenseful and gripping debut for fans of Reconstructing Amelia and Gone Girl.
Don’t try to find me. Though the message on the kitchen white board is written in Marley’s hand, her mother Rachel knows there has to be some other explanation. Marley would never run away.
As the days pass and it sinks in that the impossible has occurred, Rachel and her husband Paul are informed that the police have “limited resources.” If they want their fourteen-year-old daughter back, they will have to find her themselves. Desperation becomes determination when Paul turns to Facebook and Twitter, and launches FindMarley.com.
But Marley isn’t the only one with secrets.
With public exposure comes scrutiny, and when Rachel blows a television interview, the dirty speculation begins. Now, the blogosphere is convinced Rachel is hiding something. It’s not what they think; Rachel would never hurt Marley. Not intentionally, anyway. But when it’s discovered that she’s lied, even to the police, the devoted mother becomes a suspect in Marley’s disappearance.
Is Marley out there somewhere, watching it all happen, or is the truth something far worse?
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Sophie Hannah
Gripping, emotionally compelling and chillingly plausible. I loved it.Dorothea Benton Frank
Don’t Try to Find Me will have you turning pages into the night, desperate to learn the terrible secrets mother and daughter are hiding! This gripping debut novel is a mother’s worst nightmare.Meg Cabot
Impossible to put down. You’ll be begging friends, family, your book club, and maybe even your therapist (if you have one) to read DON’T TRY TO FIND ME. It’s the real thing.Publishers Weekly
05/26/2014At the start of Brown’s plodding debut, 14-year-old Marley Willits walks out of her parents’ Northern California house. Marley’s mother, Rachel, has no idea why her seemingly happy daughter would do such a thing. She and her no-nonsense husband, Paul, turn to the Internet to find Marley when local police fail to provide assistance to track down yet another runaway. Paul, who’s as cold and calculating as Rachel is histrionic and emotional, sets up FindMarley.com, and uses social networking sites to put the word out about their missing teenager. Brown negates most of the suspense by narrating portions of the novel in Marley’s voice—she’s left home very much on her own accord—and by making her current plight far more predictable than nail biting, casting a run-of-the-mill Facebook predator as the boogie man, whose identity is revealed far too soon. Instead of wondering about Marley’s safety, the reader is left pondering whether everyone is actually better off away from each other. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Weed Literary Agency. (July)
Fiction Addiction
This powerfully written novel, about love and betrayal, is every parents’ worst nightmare. [...] This book is a must read!Library Journal
05/15/2014At 14, Marley faces the typical issues most teens face—identity crisis, body image, parents who don't understand, and so on. When her mother, Rachel, finds the note on the kitchen whiteboard, "Don't try to find me," she doesn't believe for a minute that Marley has actually run away. As the days pass, Rachel and her husband Paul come to realize that indeed their daughter has left home. While Paul goes into full "find Marley" mode by creating a website, Facebook page, Twitter account, and regularly appearing on TV, Rachel becomes withdrawn and even a scapegoat for her daughter's disappearance. She has secrets and finding Marley may result in her past coming out as well. But Marley isn't an innocent in all of this either. VERDICT A twist on the typical runaway story, this debut novel challenges the idea of why teens run away and what motivates them. A page-turner that will engross fans of Jodi Picoult or Liane Moriarty. [Previewed in Kristi Chadwick's Mystery Spotlight feature, "Pushing Boundaries," LJ 4/15/14.—Ed.]—Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Kirkus Reviews
2014-05-17Brown, a marriage and family therapist, examines a family in midcrisis when the 14-year-old daughter runs away, leaving her parents struggling with demons of their own.Rachel and Paul recently moved with their daughter, Marley, from San Francisco to a smaller town in a rural part of California, abandoning their friends and Marley's budding social life for what they hope will be something better. But Rachel has no idea how negatively the move has affected her daughter until she finds a message on the kitchen whiteboard indicating that Marley has run away from home. Despite Rachel's initial fears that Marley might have been abducted, Paul and the police believe the girl took off, and Paul hires a publicist to keep the case in the headlines. Now, Rachel is trying desperately not only to find Marley, but to figure out what prompted the girl's flight. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Rachel and Marley during the days after Marley's departure, Brown explores the reasons Marley left, as well as her parents' suppositions about why she left. Marley's is the more authentic voice of the two and the most sympathetic—a typical young girl on the cusp of womanhood, anxious to rush that process along while looking for love and acceptance. Rachel, however, nurses a secret that could change everything, including her relationships with both her daughter and husband. Brown does a credible job of following Marley's progression as she hurtles toward change, but Rachel's case is different. In addition to her often jumbled thoughts and paranoia, she's neither sympathetic nor likable, making it easy to empathize with Marley and her decision to flee her self-centered mother.Brown's take on the family's personal dynamics proves insightful, but families of real runaway teens will shake their heads at the kind of police and media attention the author blithely assumes this type of case would draw.