Those Who Deceive Us

books:


	• Island of Lost Girls: A Novel Jennifer Mcmahon Harper Paperbacks, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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A good second novel

This is another winning novel from Jennifer McMahon, full of mystery, local Vermont color, and strong personalities. If you have read McMahon's first novel, Promise Not to Tell, you will recognize the plot of this book. The two stories have similar structures. A female protagonist, Rhonda, gets involved in a present day crime that has links to a similar crime that occurred during her childhood. The story goes back and forth from the present to the past, gradually revealing the secrets of the people in a small Vermont town.

There are a few supernatural notes here, but McMahon does not craft another ghost story. Most of the action is rooted in realism. The main character is usually realistic in her thinking. Nevertheless, when a dowser fails to find the lost child, Rhonda decides that the child must be in outer space. This fact is delivered in a completely deadpan manner that left me scratching my head. It didn't seem to fit in this story.

McMahon's second novel is not quite as good as the first. I did not get to know the characters as well, or care about them as deeply. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining read. I stayed up past midnight to finish it. Minor complaints aside, that is the measure of a good book.

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Haunting

A haunting, captivating story, mystery, that weaves back and forth between the past and present.

Missing children, complicated relationships tangled lives, the people we know or think we know, the secrets we keep.

All this is woven into a story about "loss".

Jennifer McMahon is a talented author. I was so taken by Island of Lost Girls that I'm not reading Promise Not To Tell, her debut novel!

Chilly read on a Summer day!

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Fabulous Read

I really enjoyed this book- and her other book, Promise Not to Tell. Both follow a slightly similar story line. In this book, a kidnapping in this day and age reminds the main character of the dissapearance of her own best friend many years ago. In Promise not to tell, the murder of the main character's childhood friend reminds her of a murder that took place in the present. Both follow very similar veins of fiction, and share many of the same characteristics. However, she is a wonderful writer and I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire book. There are twists and turns, and the plot line will keep you guessing throughout.

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Those Who Deceive Us

On the surface, this book is about an abduction and the search for a missing girl. The sole witness to the kidnapping is Rhonda, and as she tries to help find the kidnapper (who was dressed in a bunny suit at the time), she recalls a summer of her childhood a few years before her best friend also went missing. This summer was a turning point in her childhood much more than she knew at the time.

Both stories, past and present, are tragic enough. But I think neither is really the point of the book. To me, the point of the book was how very little in Rhonda's life is as she thinks it is. She begins to learn this during that one summer, but the full import of what was going on around her doesn't become clear until the hunt for the child she saw kidnapped is almost over.

And it's not that Rhonda's purposely deceiving herself, either in the past or in the present. But there are definitely things going on around her that she's not aware, and secrets that are being kept from her. Told in the third-person, but entirely from Rhonda's perspective, McMahon reveals these secrets in a slow but satisfying way.

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Great Story!

I really enjoyed this book, I finished it in just two days--it was pretty hard to put down. I read the author's first book as well and will keep an eye out for future books by her. Great read!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

While parked at a gas station, Rhonda sees something so incongruously surreal that at first she hardly recognizes it as a crime in progress. She watches, unmoving, as someone dressed in a rabbit costume kidnaps a young girl. Devastated over having done nothing, Rhonda joins the investigation. But the closer she comes to identifying the abductor, the nearer she gets to the troubling truth about another missing child: her best friend, Lizzy, who vanished years before.

From the author of the acclaimed Promise Not to Tell comes a chilling and mesmerizing tale of shattered innocence, guilt, and ultimate redemption.

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