Emma's Secret by Steena Holmes Guest Review

I am pleased to post this guest review by my daughter Kate Kelly. I loved Finding Emma and after this review I look forward to reading the sequel!! Thanks Katie!!!

About Emma's Secret

For two years, Megan, Peter, and their two older daughters, Alexis and Hannah, dream of nothing but being reunited with the family’s youngest child, Emma, who was kidnapped just before her third birthday. When Emma is miraculously found living with an elderly couple just miles from the family’s home, they are hopeful that her return will heal the wounds her disappearance created.

But Emma is vastly different from the sunny toddler they remember. She barely remembers her parents or her older sisters. She is quiet and withdrawn, and, worst of all, longs for the very people who kidnapped her.

Megan is consumed with bitterness, while Peter works later and later nights in the company of his gorgeous business partner. And in the middle of everything, Megan’s best friend has become suddenly distant and secretive.

Then a chance encounter in town leads to a secret that changes everything again for Emma. And Peter must decide between the happiness of his youngest daughter and the trust of his family.

About this author

Author of the new heart wrenching story "Finding Emma", Steena Holmes grew up in a small town in Canada and holds a Bachelors degree in Theology.

In 2012 she received the Indie Excellence Award. Holmes was inspired to write Finding Emma after experiencing a brief moment of horror when she’d thought her youngest daughter was missing.

She currently lives in Calgary with her husband and three daughters and loves to wake up to the Rocky Mountains each morning.

The Review

In this sequel to Finding Emma, author Steena Holmes has relieved every parent’s nightmare, Emma has come home.  Her mother, Megan, is overprotective; her father, Peter, is confused as to how to rebuild his relationship with his youngest daughter; and Emma’s two older sisters, Hannah and Alexis, are struggling with their own demons now that they are living a miracle and Emma has been returned (mostly) unharmed.

Holmes dives right in, gripping her reader from the very first page, with a journal entry from Emma’s kidnapper, Dottie. This twist of being able to see into her mind makes for interesting interludes throughout the story.  While Megan and Peter exert themselves to hold their family together and maintain their marriage, they are desperately trying to make the right decisions to allow Emma to immerse herself into her real family.  In the meantime, Dottie’s widower, Jack, struggles with the loss of a little girl, his little Emmie, who he fell in love with and raised as his own granddaughter for the two years Emma was living with him and away from her own family.  

Without naming the city, we know this could take place in any Small Town, USA.  This is my neighborhood and your neighborhood, the best coffee shop and little bakery downtown, the carpools and birthday parties we all attend.  It isn’t important for Holmes to name the city, because it is any city.  Every child is at risk of being abducted and it happens all too often.  In recent years, we’ve learned of girls being abducted, only to be tortured, molested and abused.  Then these girls grow into women with small children of their own before they are miraculously discovered and returned to their rightful lives.  As viewers of these news broadcasts, we view the abductors as monsters, terrible people who should rot in hell for the things they do to these children.  Holmes, however, takes a different approach and makes us feel bad for Emma’s abductors. 

The first 50 pages had a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes, until I realized I was not only sympathizing with Emma’s family, but I found myself understanding and sympathizing with her kidnappers as well.  The story goes on to explain how and why Emma was kidnapped, as well as in detail the relationship she built with her kidnappers.  Now, this is no Stockholm Syndrome, Emma seriously loves these people.  The question is, how will Emma’s family come to grips with that?  And how will they let Jack, a man who came to love Emma as his own and is not long for this world, maintain his connection with her?  Emma loves him and her parents just can’t understand.   We sympathize with Jack and his struggle to mourn his wife and the granddaughter she suddenly brought into their lives.  But he knew what his wife did was illegal and he didn’t try to make things right, can we honestly feel bad for him?  Holmes sure asks us to. 

This novel is beautifully written and encapsulates many different aspects of the human struggle, happiness, confusion, grief, sadness, anger, excitement and acceptance: it’s all there.  A heartwarming conclusion to very heartbreaking story, there are moments of cliché and storylines that could have been left out, others expanded upon, but all in all, Holmes has done it again.  She has made us question what we would do in a situation we all pray to avoid.