Title: Fragile
Author: Lisa Unger
Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: August 3, 2010
Hardcover: 336 pages
ISBN: 978-0307393999
Genre: Fiction, Suspense

From the Publisher:

Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.

Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.

“I know how a moment can spiral out of control,” Jones says to a shocked Maggie as he searches Rick’s room for incriminating evidence. “How the consequences of one careless action can cost you everything.”

As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear. This thrilling novel about one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds will leave readers asking, How well do I know the people I love? and How far would I go to protect them?

My Review:

Complex, multilayered and suspenseful, Fragile by Lisa Unger tells not only the story of one missing girl, but two separated by decades and the secrets kept by the inhabitants of The Hollows, New York. Charlene leaves home and everyone assumes she is a runaway, yet the adults remember another time, back when they were Charlene’s age and Sarah Meyer went missing. Are the cases as similar as they appear and if so, will anyone be willing to bring up the secrets of the past? Fragile is filled with an almost dizzying array of characters yet author Lisa Unger masterfully sorts through each one and the history behind the characters showing how small their community truly is and yet how many secrets have been and continue to be kept. The characters are well described and realistic, the plot is quite brilliant, with enough twists to keep the reader turning the pages looking for the next piece of the puzzle. Fragile is an emotionally charged suspense novel and I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone.

About the Author:

Lisa Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Lies and Black Out. Her novels have been published in more than twenty-five countries. She lives in Florida with her husband and daughter.

I received a complimentary copy of Fragile by Lisa Unger from BookSparks PR. Receiving a review copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.