What I'm Reading Wednesday: When the Stars Go Dark

 Honestly, if you asked me - I would probably say that I don't care for thrillers.  Yet, I always read a few each year and almost always end up enjoying them.  So... take that for what it is.   One fine example of this is my most recent read:  When The Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain.  

Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever.

As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another. (Description from GoodReads)

I have very much enjoyed Paula McLain's novels of historical fiction that I read but was a little hesitant to read this mystery/suspense novel. 

After personal tragedy shakes up the life of Anna Hart, a detective who specializes in finding missing children,  she flees to the small town where she found comfort from her troubled childhood with her loving and supportive (and now deceased) foster parents.  When she arrives, she finds that a young girl has recently disappeared and quickly becomes tangled up in the investigation.

When the Stars Go Dark expertly combines the fictional tale of the search for a missing girl in northern California with references to real-life missing person cases from the same time period, such as the disappearance of Polly Klaas.

I founded the story a little slow to start.  It took me a while to get through about the first third of the book.  But once it got rolling, I didn't want to put it down.

My one warning about this book is that if you are sensitive to books that contain child abuse/neglect, murder and/or violence, or sexual assault - give this one a pass.