Book Feature & Review – What Is Mine by Lyn Liao Butler

A new thriller for your winter TBR!

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and GetRed PR for the gifted copy in exchange for my review and feature

WHAT IS MINE – Lyn Liao Butler (Released February 6th, 2024)

Here’s the synopsis:

The search for a missing boy entwines the lives of two desperate women. One seeks redemption for her sister; the other will do anything for the love of her life.

Hope Chen and her husband are raising her nine-year-old nephew, Luca, in the wake of his troubled mother’s death. Luca finally has a safe home in a neighborhood where kids play in the streets and nobody locks their doors. Then one day, Luca and his dog disappear without a trace. Guilt-ridden, fearing the worst but praying for the best, Hope finds her imagination running wild.

Meanwhile, a woman with dangerous secrets to keep buried will do anything to protect her marriage. In one fleeting instant, it’s all within her reach. She can finally give her husband the one thing that will make him love her again.

Hope will do anything to get Luca back. The other woman will do anything to stop Hope. As Hope’s search grows more desperate and the other woman’s plans more twisted, their lives collide in an explosive battle of wits. With a boy caught in the middle, nothing on this deadly path of love and revenge is what it seems.

My Thoughts: 3.5/5 stars – A good thriller/suspense novel is full of secrets, lies, backstabbing, and bonus points for obsessions. This book has all of those and keeps guessing until the very end. I don’t normally mention many trigger warnings, but I know how difficult mental health representation can be in this genre, so proceed with caution if that is something that could affect your reading experience. I also want to mention that this falls more so under the umbrella of domestic suspense/drama and not a thriller. The pacing is slower moving than you would expect or want from a thriller. I think that any book having to do with the disappearance of a child immediately has a tone of anxiety and dread. You feel the desperation radiating off the characters as they try to find nine year old Luca. This book was told in three parts and each one was crucial in setting up the characters and progress the search. I think the only drawback for me was the fact that the pacing was a little slower, however, I actually wasn’t able to predict the ending! That’s always a win for me in this genre as many books can feel predictable at times. I’ll now need to look for more from Lyn Liao Butler.