Book Review: LOOK FOR ME (Detective DD Warren #9)

Title: Look For Me (Detective DD Warren #9)
Author: Lisa Gardner
Publisher: Dutton
Pages: 400
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The most beautiful thing about Look For Me by Lisa Gardner is the fact that the overwhelming emotion that assails one after reading this book is love. It is hard to imagine, considering the fact that the realization of that love emerges out of deep sadness and tragedy.

In the Prologue, we are introduced to Sarah. Her life hasn’t been the same since she and her three roommates were brutally attacked by a killer. She alone survived. One year later, Flora Dane, herself a survivor of a nightmare of 472 days in the captivity of a monster named Jacob Ness, barges into her life, offering to help Sarah manage her fear. 

Flora has started a support group to help other survivors of trauma. She and Sarah decide to look for Roxanna (or Roxy) Baez, the sole survivor after her entire family is shot to death..

The heroine of the series is Sergeant DD Warren. She is called to a home in which single mom Juanita Baez, her son, Manny Baez, aged nine, and daughter, Lola Baez, aged thirteen, and the mother’s boyfriend Charlie Boyd, have been found killed. A 16-year-old daughter Roxy Baez, who was out walking the families two elderly spaniels at the time, is the only one to survive the carnage.

The police are unsure about whether Roxy has been abducted or if she has killed her family and escaped. But Flora believes she is blameless.

And then there is another shooting. Hector Alvalos, Manny’s father, is shot at. And a girl, matching Roxy’s description, is spotted running away from the scene.

Both DD and Flora conduct their own investigations parallelly. At first they work independently, until the shooting at Hector causes DD to allow Flora to tag along. Both women are convinced that the key to the mystery lies in the foster home to which Roxy and Lola were forcibly moved after the state declared their mother, an alcoholic then, as being unfit to raise her children. Subsequently, Juanita cleaned up her act and regained custody of her children. But the nightmare continues to haunt the girls.

Will DD and Flora solve the mystery before another life is taken?

The story is written in the third person past tense point of view of DD, the first person past tense point of view of Flora and the PoV of Roxy which comes to us in the form of an essay, written in 8 long chapters, that she submitted at school. The essay, on What is a Perfect Family?, is the key to understanding what Roxy was going through.

Even when DD and Flora start collaborating, their PoVs continue to show up in alternate chapters. And that helped the pace of the book.

Flora’s PoV brings out the angst that survivors never manage to overcome. We come to know of the misery they live every day of their lives, as they are tortured by the recurring question of why they didn’t try harder to escape, of whether it was their fault somehow.

What keeps this book going is the surfeit of strong women characters, both major and minor. Each of them have strong personalities, and they take decisions and actions that propel the story forward.

While I liked both DD and Flora, I found the latter more appealing. She has her vulnerabilities and her quirks, and yet she was reaching beyond herself to help others. 

I found Flora very authentic. Her efforts to do something to keep the nightmares and trauma at bay were very heartening. She made the psychological experience of an abducted person come alive.

Of course, I did wonder how she managed to finance herself. There is a vague mention of a job she holds, but we never see her actually going to work.

I also appreciated DD’s single-minded focus, often at the cost of family time. DD doesn’t trust Flora’s methods (the sarcastic flip-flop in their conversations was fun), but there is a measure of respect she has for Flora that is undeniable.

I felt sorry for Juanita who proved herself capable of learning from her mistakes and working towards a happy ending for her children.

But the woman who carries this book on her frail shoulders is undoubtedly Roxy. Driven by fierce love for her family, she is the parent for her siblings when her mother and her boyfriend give in to their addictions. She and Lola both take great risks and subject themselves to tremendous hardships and strain, to protect the other.

Unfortunately, for Lola, that is not enough, and for a while, she gives in to hatred and resentment. But love does triumph, even in the midst of tragedy. That is what we learn from both girls, and how they are acted when it mattered the most.

Mike Davis, the only friend Roxy has, also redeems himself in a beautiful way.

The writing simply excels itself in Roxy’s essays. These are her first-person accounts which give us a peek into what she is feeling. The trauma of kids torn away from their families and siblings and forced into foster homes, where conditions are often abysmal, is well reflected in the narrative. Sample this:

A perfect family doesn’t just happen. A perfect family has to be made. Mistakes. Regret. Repair. You have to work at it.

Where are those perfect families…The ones we’re most likely to admire are simply the ones with the best-kept secrets….The real perfect families, they have warts and bruises and scars…A perfect family, I think, is one that’s learned how to forgive.

When it comes to the beauty of the prose, Flora’s PoV too has its share of gems worth quoting.

Bad people don’t want to deal with the powerful…They prey on the weak.

It takes a villain to make a hero.

The only thing that I found out of place was the fact that the author chose to give us Sarah’s backstory in the Prologue. The story of the multiple murders of Roxy’s family would have made far greater sense, since the book is about these murders and the investigation into them. 

Prologues aren’t supposed to pique reader interest by feeding us something sensational. They should invite us to read by giving us a hint of what is to follow, something crucial that will only prove its significance to us on hindsight.

The book causes us to reflect on a range of pressing social issues such as alcoholism, the foster care system, broken families, how parental irresponsibility inflicts tragic consequences on the lives of innocent children, even babies, the harmful effects of drugs, guns and violence, and how the odds are stacked against so many, for no fault of theirs.

Ultimately, Look For Me is a beautiful book that manages to wrest beauty and courage and love from the brink of despairing circumstances, and for that alone, this book deserves its readers. 

(I received an ARC from First to Read).