Lisa Gardner is a go-to author for me, so I went in completely blind and this latest installment in the series did not disappoint. I was pleasantly surprised to see Flora Dane is back. She was in the previous book in this series – Find Her. I believe this is the first time Lisa Gardner has brought back a previous character from another book, other than recurring characters.

Flora Dane is a survivor turned vigilante and lives to help others survive. She has an online group of survivors, her little network if you will. Roxy Baez has recently reached out to the group looking for help for a friend. Flora has never personally met Roxy, but has chatted with her online, so when she sees an Amber Alert has been issued for her she is rightly concerned. Roxy’s family has been killed and D.D. Warren is on the case to find out who the killer is and to find Roxy.

Flora and D.D. are both determined to find Roxy safe and sound, so they decide to form an unlikely alliance and work together. They will investigate on their own and share information in the search for Roxy. Flora and D.D. working together is fantastic! They have a love/hate relationship and I love the way they banter.

The chapters alternate between D.D. and Flora, which worked well for the most part, but at times there was a little too much overlap and the story got a bit repetitive. Roxy’s personal narrative is an excellent way to tell her story. It is eye-opening, heartbreaking and honest. I loved learning her backstory in her own words.

I recommend reading this series in order, especially book eight and nine, due to the character overlap. Lisa Gardner is a fantastic mystery/thriller writer, if you haven’t tried one of her books, this series is a great place to start!

Crime thriller queen Lisa Gardner returns following Right Behind You, (2017) landing on my Top Books of 2017 with her latest twisty suspense thriller —LOOK FOR ME.

Two favorite characters, Detective D. D. Warren and Flora Dane work together to solve a crime. A brutal family murder with one remaining girl missing.

The last time we caught up with D. D. Warren and Flora Dane (2016) Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren, #8).

Flora Dane, a former kidnapping victim, turned survivor— held in a coffin box by a sadistic monster for 472 days — on a mission to save other victims from predators, holding on to an obsession of REVENGE, or something else?

In LOOK FOR ME, Boston Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren returns with crime scene expert husband, Alex and five-year-old son, Jack. D. D.’s family outing to find a dog for Jack gets sidetracked with a brutal crime.

A family of five. Two adults, three kids, and two dogs (Blaze and Rosie). Shots were fired. A brutal murder. The responding officers found four bodies. The oldest daughter, a sixteen-year-old female, and two dogs are still unaccounted for.

The girl’s name Roxanna Baez, Hispanic with two elderly Brittany spaniels and both reported blind.

D D’s job was to access and strategize. However, has the girl escaped, been kidnapped, victim or murderer? Or was she just not home at the time?

Juanita Baez and Charlie were the parents. Lola – age thirteen, Manny age nine. Did the father murder the wife and kids and shoot himself? However, the way the shots were fired, they had to rule out the guy as a suicide.

The mom had a history of DUIs over five years earlier; however, the father had a clean record. No drugs, alcohol, or any high-risk lifestyle. An ordinary family. A family of secrets? Was the daughter the perpetrator?

They had to find her.

Flora Dane is a survivor. It has been a year and now she is teaching others how to live again. An abduction at the hands of Jacob Ness, a serial rapist, and murderer. Flora is a fighter. She had gone from victim to vigilante.

Mixed with personal and troubling narratives from Roxanna about the perfect family. She was writing after a teacher posed the question about family.

“A perfect family has to be made. Mistakes. Regret. Repair. You have to work at it.”

We also meet other survivors from trauma and the support group. Flora teaches them that bad people do not want to deal with the powerful. They prey on the weak. Sarah recalls this girl coming to discuss help for a friend.

Gardner skillfully weaves a complex tale of a family sent away to live at Mother Del’s (abuse, neglect, rape, assault) before coming back to live with their mother and Charlie. Until the mom cleaned up her act. What went on while they were away?

“Where are these perfect families? Can there even be such a thing? One where everything goes so right where no one ever hurts each other? Or is there just me and my family and all of the lessons we’re still learning the hard way?”

After protecting her siblings, from all the abuse while in foster care, Roxanna could not possibly hurt her family? No longer foster kids after three years, they were reunited family in a real house with two dogs. A family ripped apart and brought back together.

What happened to this family? Motive? In one moment. That’s all it took. Destroyed. Over, Finished. Done.

Someone is protecting a friend.

Wow, this was one complex, intense, emotional, multi-layered and twisty roller coaster ride! Gardner keeps you guessing while exploring the dark evil within the foster care system.

I enjoyed catching with DD and hubby as they try and balance work and family life. Flora, a vigilante is kick ass and hilarious. (thanks for bringing her back). Two different women. Both with their own demons.

“Revenge must be revenge, or it isn’t sweet.”

Highly recommend; however, while I always enjoy Lisa Gardner’s books, this one was not as strong as last year’s Right Behind You, in my opinion.

A special thank you to Dutton and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy.

JDCMustReadBooks

You do not get the title of Queen of Mystery, Thrillers, and Suspense for no reason. Lisa Gardner is the number one NY Times Bestselling author of some of the best books ever. I have reviewed many of them before and have admitted to being an avid fan, but I have to say Look For Me is one of my new favorites. I stand strongly by The Perfect Husband as my hands down favorite, but Look For Me almost took over the lead.

Look For Me follows the story of a family who ends up murdered in their house, but the teenage daughter is missing. My favorite detective, D.D. Warren, is quickly on the scene and tail of said teenager and I thought it would be easy to figure out who the culprit was, but every time I turned a page I would change my mind. Gardner has this innate ability to keep you guessing until the absolute end. Look For Me was jam packed with drama, both good and sad, from page one. This novel also did something I found a little fun and added a new spin to things. She intertwined a past story and some background on a newer character that she then twisted in to the current ongoing story. We not only got our usual D.D. Warren and her incredible team of detectives, analysts, and more, but we got good old Flora Danes from back in the day. Flora Dane’s character added a new, rogue detective type vibe to this story and a second perspective to the entire investigation. It was like reading two investigations with female leads that are very similar in a lot of ways, but refuse to admit it to each other.

Normally I would point out what I did not like about this novel, but there was nothing. It flowed smoothly and quickly. I finished it in about six hours of reading dispersed over a few days. The characters and story line were baffling and intriguing. I kept picking it up even if I only had a few minutes to read. Look For Me had everything a good novel should; suspense, drama, heartbreak, and hope. Gardner draws you in from page one to the very last detail. If you do not pick up this novel on February 6th then you are missing out. She also has a ton of other books to check out until then. You won’t regret reading Look For Me. You will only regret not reading Gardner’s work sooner.

Lisa Gardner is one of my favorite authors. And for good reason.
She’s good. Very good. Case in point: LOOK FOR ME, the latest in her D.D. Warren series. The story has too many twists and turns to count, but it’s the characters that drive it, and make it impossible to put down. The story revolves around three tough and smart women: Detective D.D. Warren, of course; Flora Dane, a survivor and avenger who teaches other survivors how to navigate life, and seek revenge; and the irrepressible Roxy, a sixteen-year-old girl whose entire family has been massacred. Is Roxy a victim, or a killer? If not her, then who? And why? With Roxy on the run, D.D. and Flora must find her and uncover a dark truth. This is a great story.

DP Lyle, award-winning author, lecturer, story consultant

In 2016, I read Find Me by Gardner, a dark book, but a fascinating one. Gardner's D.D. Warren series is one of my favorites, but Find Me was especially intriguing because of the character of Flora Dane.

Look for Me doubled my enjoyment because Gardner brought back Flora Dane, and (gradually) the disciplined detective D.D. Warren and the "survivor-turned-avenger" Flora Dane are able to work together to solve the murder of a family.

Four members of a family are murdered and a teenage girl is missing. It is uncertain whether Roxy is also a victim, or perhaps, the guilty party. This isn't the story of the perfect family, but it is a story of efforts made to overcome some of the dysfunctions that exist.

I liked Gardner's empathetic approach to the characters and difficulties in the novel. While often easier to reduce things to black and white, life rarely operates without backstories.

Here's hoping that Gardner will continue the partnership of D.D. and Flora. While I enjoyed this series before Flora arrived in Find Me, the undeclared partnership works even better--and I want more of these strong and independent women working together.

Read in November; blog review scheduled for Jan. 23, 2018.

NetGalley/Penguin Group

Crime/Police Procedural. Feb. 6, 2018. Print length: 400 pages.

This is an interesting plot with DD on the hunt of what she’s not sure to believe. The reader is kept guessing throughout. I do wish there was more insight into DD and other characters. Without it, it is a bit wooden until about half through. Becomes fast paced and intense until the end

Gardiner is back with a whopper of a book. This will not disappoint It is fast, edge-of-your-seat kind of writing. I couldn't put it down

Another strong entry by Lisa Gardner... She brings characters we have met before and presents them with a challenge which will cause them to not only want to get answers about the crime... but cause them to look at their own lives.
Excellent

I really like D.D. Warren, a woman who hasn't quite reached "normal" after a very shaky past despite loving, understanding husband Alex and 5-year-old son Jack. Here, she teams up with Flora Dane (a character from previous books), who's also making strides toward normal after more than a year of being kidnapped and seriously abused. Both women bury themselves in their work; D.D. as a sergeant detective with the Boston P.D., and Flora as an advocate who helps other crime victims find new and productive lives.

Neither trusts the other; but sometimes, two heads really are better than one no matter how reluctantly they bump together. In this instance, the motivation to join forces follows the grisly murder of a family of two adults and two children. An older daughter, Roxanna, somehow escaped - presumably because she was out walking the family's two blind dogs.

They seemed like a typical family, but they weren't without issues; the mother, a recovering alcoholic, lost her three children to a frightening foster care experience for a time, only recently turning her life around, getting them back and moving to a small but cozy house. To that end, the question of why the family was murdered in cold blood needs to be answered before they can determine the who. And speaking of the latter, why hasn't Roxanna turned up? Surely she's heard that her family is dead - could it be she's in hiding because she's the killer?

As much as anything, this book is a study in character - or more to the point, how people act (and react) when bad things happen to them. D.D. and Flora are trying to help themselves by helping others; but the Baez family, from mother Juanita to Roxanna, her younger sister Lola and even their much younger brother, Manny, have found their own, very different, ways of coping. Chapters shift from the perspectives of D.D., Flora and Roxanna, each revealing bits of what's going on until they blend together in a far from perfect - but somewhat hopeful - ending.

And from my perspective, I say another one well done. Many thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I give this book 4 stars only because there was quite a bit of redundancy of things that already happened. Besides that, I don't have many qualms with the book. A solid 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group-Dutton for a digital galley of this novel.

When a story touches me so much it makes me cry, that story deserves a five star rating. And I don't mean just tear up, I mean cry.

If you have been following the Detective D. D. Warren series you will remember the circumstances of the kidnapping, torture and sexual abuse of Flora Dane in the book FIND HER. In that book we learned what had happened to Flora during her 472 days of captivity and watched her turn into a vigilante force for finding and helping other victims. Now Detective Warren is grudgingly using the very unusual skills Flora and some of her group of survivors have to try to find a missing teen, Roxanna Baez. When they find her, will Roxy be a victim or a suspect? Her family members have all been killed inside their home on a quiet Saturday morning. Where is Roxy and why is she still alive?

I am a real fan of the writing of Lisa Gardner because she captures my interest and draws me into the situations in her stories so well I find myself feeling fully involved. This story of a family being killed with all that happened to them leading up to that tragedy was definitely hard to read because it felt so believable and possible. Unfortunately situations like this come to our attention frequently in the real world but Gardner keeps the crime scene details as vague as she can while still showing the reader the crime. If you have difficulty reading about children and teens placed in harmful situations, this might not be the book for you. So many people were trying to do good and yet it went so terribly wrong.

As usual, Lisa Gardner delivers with this fresh, new thriller. Find Her was the first novel I ever read by LG, and I fell I love with D.D. Warden and Flora Dane. So I was pleasantly surprised when Flora made her return in Look For Me. I hope this means we’ll be seeing more of the duo!

I received this ARC from NetGalley in return for an honest review. Well, it's author is Lisa Gardner and as a well known author and reader of her books, I can say she didnt disappoint me in this book. Again the story starts off great, and keeps you thinking through the end.

A family of five, four of whom have been brutally murdered - with one that is missing. Did she kill her family? or did someone come into the house while she was out walking the dogs....was she the victim or the killer? It is now Det. D.D. Warren's job to find her with a little help from her friends. Flora Dane from Find Her comes back into this story to clear up the mystery.

I honestly could not figure out who did it and why until the very end...and was surprised because I never figured on that person. But the book gives you an insight to foster homes and how fragile the mind is in a child and what they are capable of later on in life.

Put this book on your TBR list or pre-order it - coming in February 2018.

The personal narrative of Roxy is heartbreaking, yet beautiful. It brings the story together. D.D. Warren has such a heart for her work as shown in Lisa Gardiner's latest book.

Lisa Gardner always keeps me at the edge of the seat, and the D.D. Warren series is definitely a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, it became clear for me at 80% who committed the crime, so the suspense was gone at the end. Still a great read, though!

Look For Me by Lisa Gardner ****

A family is murdered and their 16 year old daughter is missing with their 2 dogs. Did she escape or did she murder her family?
DD Warren catches the case and discovers the mother used to be an alcoholic and the kids were put in foster care before being returned back to her. Did something nefarious happen in foster care to make a 16 year old murder her family? Good thing DD Warren is such a great detective and looks at cases from all angles. A page turner for sure

I usually like Lisa Gardner, but the intro scene--a random stranger knocking on the door at 2am with psychological help? Didn't work. I gave up.

Absolutely great book! I love the character Fiona and hope to see lots more of her! Can't wait for the next one!

My review of this title will be published in Library Journal's Jan. 2018 issue.

D. D. Warren and Flora Dane join forces to find a teenage girl whose entire family has been executed. Did she do it? Is she in the run from the killer? Why was her family targeted, and does it relate to her time in foster care? The action and suspense propel the reader to the stunning conclusion. This is a very satisfying entry in a bestselling series.