“The girl has no face. Where her eyes and nose and mouth should be, there is only skin. A flat plane of flesh stretched tight as a mask.”

Thank you to Atria Books for gifting me a copy of BEHIND THE RED DOOR by Megan Collins.

“When Fern Douglas sees the news about Astrid Sullivan, a thirty-four-year-old missing woman from Maine, she is positive that she knows her. Fern’s husband is sure it’s because of Astrid’s famous kidnapping—and equally famous return—twenty years ago, but Fern has no memory of that, even though it happened an hour outside her New Hampshire hometown. And when Astrid appears in Fern’s recurring nightmare, one in which a girl reaches out to her, pleading, Fern fears that it’s not a dream at all, but a memory.

Back home in New Hampshire, Fern purchases a copy of Astrid’s recently published memoir—which may have provoked her original kidnapper to abduct her again—and as she reads through its chapters and visits the people and places within it, she discovers more evidence that she has an unsettling connection to the missing woman. As Fern’s search becomes increasingly desperate, she hopes to remember her past so she can save Astrid in the present…before it’s too late.”

What an incredibly dark and engrossing story this was! I have always loved a good psychological thriller and this one had all of the psychological components that fascinate me. A lost childhood memory. A kidnapped woman. An absent, self-absorbed, narcissistic father. It was everything that I hoped that it would be.

I will say that I did figure out where the ending was going fairly early into the book BUT Megan Collins wrote in such a way that I started to doubt my guess. I loved reading as she worked her magic and wove such an enthralling novel that kept me on the edge of my seat. I would love to know where her inspiration for this book came from as I can’t imagine having a father (or mother) as Fern did.

There was nothing slow about BEHIND THE RED DOOR. Between Fern’s glimpses into her mysterious connection with the missing woman and the experts from Astrid Sullivan’s memoir, I was completely absorbed into the pages of this book.

BEHIND THE RED DOOR will be published on August 4, 2020, but is available to pre-order now!