2021 Book Review #26: When the Stars Go Dark

 

This author is new to me although I've seen a couple of her novels on the library shelf.  I really loved this book and didn't know one of the sub-plots was based on a real kidnapping case that happened in 1993!!  I knew the name was familiar but I didn't have that info until I finished the book and read the author's notes.  Highly recommend this if you like fast-paced good drama/mystery. It's also a "clean" novel meaning no outwardly sexual scenes or bad language. 

STORY SUMMARY

Anna Hart lives in San Francisco and is an experienced and well known missing persons detectives, specializing in finding children.   She has a lot of knowledge about the dark side of human beings.  But when tragedy hits her personal life, and her husband Brendan asks her to leave the house for a separation, she becomes numb. She heads back to where she grew up with her foster parents, Hap and Eden, in the little village of Mendocino in Northern California. She thinks it might be the only place for her.  

On the day that Anna arrives in her old hometown, she discovers that a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels so familiar to her.....it reminds her of her childhood when the unsolved murder of her friend Jenny hit Mendocino and changed the community forever. 

As Anna begins to get interested in helping to solve this case, she has to deal with the past and present days intersecting.  She knows that some of the most difficult lessons of her life...particularly  her childhood....have given her insights into how victims come into contact with violent perpetrators.

Anna becomes obsessed with the local missing girl case (she tends to get obsessed with her career's work) and she must learn to accept the help from others and learn to get out of her own way......she realizes that this is true courage. 

Will she find Cameron alive?  and what about the other two girls from Northern California who have recently been kidnapped or are missing?  (Polly and Shannon).  Who is the perpetrator and will he or she be caught??

MY THOUGHTS

I was immediately drawn into this story because the name Polly Klaas struck a chord with me.  I had my oldest daughter the year Polly was kidnapped by knifepoint in her own bedroom in Petaluma, California and as soon as I began to read the story and her name appeared, I had a feeling this was a real case. (I was correct). The main part of the story......the missing teenager named Cameron is not an actual kidnapping..that part is fiction.  It is so well developed though that it reads as though this was a true case.

I loved the character development and the surprise of having a metaphysical aspect to the story.  This added another layer of mystery and suspense without being too spooky or weird. 

Some of the topics that this novel hits on could trigger some reactions in readers who have not dealt with the following issues:  child abandonment, death of a child, death of a parent,  kidnapping, being raised in foster care settings and adoption, single parenthood, work addictions, mental illness. 

The main themes in this story are mainly about facing our fears, redemption, what it takes to reclaim our lives when the very worse things happen, and our faith in one another.  I loved that the characters were believable and "real" when facing these themes. 

There were a couple of quotes I really liked:

"Getting your heart broken, was the privilege of being human......that it's impossible to be alive and not get hurt sometimes, not if you're doing it right." (pg 282, When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain, c.2021)

"The people we love never leave us, Anna.  You know that already.  That's what I mean by spirit.  I mean love." (pg 355) 

and this one:

"Long ago Corolla told me that it's not what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it.  I'm starting to understand the difference, and how maybe the only way we can survive what's here, and what we are, is together." (pg 360).

Another thing I loved learning is that the author disclosed that she too was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse......no wonder she can write about carrying on and learning to carry the difficult things.  I could so relate!!

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature themes).

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 10.