Lovely emotional book about a mother and daughter, told in two time periods. Anne Marie never fully understood her mother Catherine until now- when all the secrets of their lives begin to spool out. This dramatic story, which involves two cultures, two rotten men, and a tale which might seem familiar, never goes over the top. The writing is restrained, which is a good thing in such a situation. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

As soon as I read a blurb about this book, I knew I wanted to read it. It sounded compelling and indeed it was.
I remember from my childhood reading about a case (not the one this was based on) about a man who took his child(ren) to another country and the Mom's desperate and endless work to get them back. It haunted me then and still.

No Time to Blink was well written and compelling. I had no trouble with the changing of time from present to past, which sometimes is confusing in other books. I do wish that we were offered more insight into the time from when Ann Marie disappeared to when her Mom went over the Beirut, but it didn't effect my enjoyment of the book.

I read this book in 24 hours- easy to read and hard to put down!

‘No Time to Blink’ is an excellent story of a mother daughter relationship that examines the question of how far a mother will go to protect her child. When the story begins the reader finds that Ann Marie is getting divorced as a result of her husband’s infidelity. The reader soon learns that this parallels events in Ann Marie’s mother’s life. As the story unfolds Ann Marie learns many things that she had never known about her childhood.
I love how the author wrote of the relationship between Ann Marie and her mother, Catherine, and the strong bond that they have always shared. I liked how the author wrote the similarities between Ann Marie’s current situation and the situation in the past between Catherine and Ann Marie’s father. I also liked how Ann Marie learned of the details of her past through her mother’s journals. This is a story of love and sacrifice, as well as forgiveness. The story illustrates how life can change in an instant leaving you no time to blink. I was immediately drawn into the story of Catherine and Ann Marie. The author kept me engaged and couldn’t put the book down, highly recommend.
~ I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions. Great Thoughts’ Great Readers Ninja~

What a harrowing story! So well written that the words cut deep into the heart of angst and love. It is a journey that no parent should ever have to take. Even with cultural differences, does the father have rights when he has crossed the line of hate and abuse? What about the rights of children, not to be harmed just to get back at a spouse or other parent? Forgiveness and love that is what matters, even if it comes many years down the road!

Grown daughter (Ann Marie) finally learns the truth from her mother (CC) about her estranged father (Gabriel).

Inspired by a true story, No Time To Blink alternates between the past (1970's Chicago and Beirut, Lebanon) and the present as mother, CC, finally divulges decade old secrets to her grown daughter, Ann Marie. This story was very suspenseful, and I was hooked from the very first chapter when Ann Marie meets with a divorce attorney, Stewart Fishman, and he says:

"Your mother was a client of mine ... What a horrible story that was ... Oh my God ... I can't believe you're the little girl."

Well, after that tension-filled beginning, I was on the edge of my seat desperately wanting to know what happened between Ann Marie's parents. Usually, I very much enjoy when stories alternate between the past and the present, but this time, I didn't want either one to end. I found myself very impatient and tempted to read each of them straight through haha.

This was my first time reading this author, and I look forward to more. In fact, I already own The Unimaginable. Yay.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, NetGalley, and Great Thoughts' Ninja Review Team for an ARC of this book! All opinions are my own.

This is the very first book I have read by Dina Silver, but it will not be my last.
This novel was amazing! I read it while holding my breath and at times tears, in one day.
As a parent, I could feel the pain and anxiety that Catherine went through as her child is missing and all she endures to find her.
I could feel the sadness for Catherine's daughter Ann Marie and her three boys as Catherine moves into their home with an illness that takes away her speech.
I love the way the chapter's went from Catherine to Ann Marie's voice.
This was well written and a wonderful story and journey.

Once I started this, I had a hard time putting it down.

Told in dual viewpoints from a mother and a daughter who share a complicated family past, each woman’s story compelled me to keep turning the pages.

From the title, I expected more edge-of-my-seat moments, but instead was gifted with the wonder of unconditional familial love expressed in a myriad of ways by different characters.

At times heartbreaking, the novel ends resiliently hopeful for new beginnings.

I receieved an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley.

I LOVED this book, it was truly amazing. The cover initially caught my eye but the story pulled me in and I didn't want to stop reading. I would have to say it's one of the best books I have read this year.

The story is told in the alternating points of view of Catherine and her daughter Ann Marie. Catherine married Gabriel, a Lebanese business man, and a few short months after the wedding she finds herself living in Beirut and pregnant. Shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Catherine's life with her husband changes. She is forbidden to return home to the States and even has her passport locked up. Gabriel finally allows Catherine to return home with Ann Marie, but the joy is short lived. Gabriel abducts Ann Marie and takes her back to Beirut. Ann Marie is unaware any of this happened to her as a baby and doesn't find out until she is meets with a divorce attorney who happened to know her mom.

The book focuses on family and love. I loved the story, characters and style of writing. A few tears may have been shed. I definitely recommend it and want to read more books by the author.

Thanks to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing and the author, Dina Silver, for a free electronic ARC of this novel.

No Time To Blink is an exciting tale that shows that a mother's love can and will accomplish amazing things. Catherine is swept off her feet by a handsome but mysterious man—they are so in love. Soon after they are married, he moves them back to his home country. Then the trouble begins for Catherine. She is basically held hostage in her own home and someone is tailing her whenever she leaves the house. All she wants is to get back home to her family and to take her daughter with her.

Ann Marie, the daughter, remembers nothing about the life that involved her mother and father when she was so very young. As the story goes back and forth between the past and the present, we come to understand how Catherine's life and Ann Marie's life were affected by that time in Beirut.

No Time to Blink is a riveting story that you will want to keep reading. It has strong and wonderful characters who demonstrate the depth and power of love. I think Dina's books just keep getting better and better with each one she writes and this one is definitely a must read!

Wow what a read. This fast paced story kept me glued to the pages, I couldn’t read fast enough needing to know how it would all play out. Of course this is every mother’s worst nightmare so my heart was in my throat the whole time. I loved the back and forth timelines as the two women told their stories as well.

I recommend this book to lovers of domestic drama and a well written story. This was a good one.

I received an advance readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Wow! I really wasn’t expecting to cry at the end of this book but it really was a roller coaster of emotions. You truly feel what CC went through fighting to get Ann Marie back from Gabriel. How she wasn’t going to give up.

How Ann Marie had the same fight in her as her mother but just needed to use it in a different manner.

Once I started this story about a mother and her daughter, I couldn't put it down. It was a fantastic and addictive read that asked the question - how far would you go to protect your children. The story is told in dual time lines by the mother and daughter as secrets are revealed and questions are answered about their pasts.

Ann Marie is the mother of three sons and is in the midst of an ugly divorce with a cheating and vindictive husband. Her mother, Catherine comes to help her out and has decided that she needs to share her earlier years with her daughter through the journals that she kept. When Catherine was in college, she fell in love with a businessman from Beirut, much to her rich parents disapproval and ended up living in Beirut in the early 70s when her daughter was born. Her husband refuses to allow her to see her family and locks up her passport so that she can't go back to America with her baby. I really don't want to tell any more about the plot so that readers can experience the tense times in Catherine and Ann Marie's lives. I highly recommend this book - once I started it, I didn't put it down until the end because I was so invested in the struggles in the story. This is definitely a profound story of the love between a mother and her child.

4.5 STARS!
I love Dina Silver books—I love her ability to take from real-life experiences making something completely unique and her own and doing it in such a way that her stories are completely addicting and mesmerizing.

No Time to Blink is women's fiction, not something I read often, but perfection all the same.

This book is told in dual POV's and told from the perspective of Catherine Clarke in the 70's, her marriage to a Lebanese man Gabriel, the birth of her daughter Ann Marie and ultimately her struggle to return to the home she had always wanted to escape from, all the while protecting her beloved daughter.

Interestingly enough, the other POV is from Ann Marie in the present day and her own struggles with her marriage, all the while trying to take care of her three children and providing them with as normal of a childhood as she possibly can given the circumstances.

The bond between mother and daughter touched my heart and as I read this story made me hope and pray for that close of a bond with myself and my daughter as she grows and matures. I LOVED how as a reader I could feel that love emitting from the pages. I also thought that the author did a great job in allowing the reader to immerse themselves into the Lebanese culture... I could smell the foods, I could see the country from the eyes of Catherine, and it truly made me feel like I was part of the story.

And let me tell you... I was IN this story... I was vested in every way.

The hurt and pain—all the emotions really—in this book was real, relatable, and above all stunning. This is Dina Silver's best book yet. A MUST READ for readers who enjoy women's fiction, who want a powerful story that will give you all the feels and keep you hooked until the very end.

Solid 4.5 Stars.

No Time to Blink is written in dual timelines and perspectives - a mother in the early 70’s, and her grown daughter in the late 2000’s. I really enjoyed this book and getting to read two sides of connected lives and histories. A lot of the story takes place in a country and culture that I know nothing about, so it was interesting to read about. And, of course, the drama is fantastic and the story is very well written. I looked forward to reading the author’s other books, as she is a new author to me.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions. All opinions are mine and mine alone.

The journey you encounter in this book feels real and pressing as you uncover each new twist the characters unfold. This is a story of love a anguish
Through the many books I've read of Dina Silvers,
I really enjoy that she writes a poetic charm to a real life story with a fictional twist. Yes i read the dedications. They often tell what inspired the story.
This is an easy to follow read with a complicated plot.
I loved it

4 loving but heart breaking relationship stars

This was quite a moving story of how far a mother would go to keep her child overcoming obstacles and fighting for what she wants and who she loves.

Catherine Clark is a young girl, accustomed to living well in Greenwich Connecticut. Her life has been a good life so far, one of luxury and privileged. Her mother and father are somewhat staid not showing much in the way of emotional love for their daughters. Catherine (CC), meets a young man Gabriel, who is very different from the country club set she is use to. He is Lebanese and there is an instant love connection between the two. Eventually, they elope, and move to Chicago for a few months and CC finds herself pregnant. One day, after only living in Chicago for a few months, Gabriel, comes home and announces they are moving to Beirut. After the move, CC realizes this is not the life she wants as her husband moves more and more into the direction of being the person who directs and leads this marriage. As their marriage crumbles, CC makes plans to take Ann Marie and flee to the states.

The struggles CC has keeping her child, arriving back home, and finding peace are portrayed and as the story continues we meet her daughter, Ann Marie, who is all grown up and experiencing issues of her own with a faithless husband and three young sons. As we learn of Ann Marie's problems, we also discover more and more of CC's problems as they are revealed through journals she has written of her life.

This is a twofold story of mother and daughter and the love they share and the things they will do to protect the ones they love. It is also a story of the relationships between husbands and wives and how a once loving relationship can turn into something bitter and nasty.

Thanks you to the author, Lake Union Publishing, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

I’ve read or listened to several of Ms. Silver’s books and enjoyed each one so I was happy to see her new book was available on Netgalley. She writes unique storylines, with well-developed characters and it’s easy to get lost in her stories.

As the tension and suspense builds in this story from both the point-of-view of Catherine and Ann Marie, it reminded me of driving and listening to The Unimaginable on an MP3. Somehow I managed to get to work and home but so focused on the story that the time flew by.

It was sad that the marriages of both Catherine and Ann Marie started out so well and then changed drastically. I believe that Catherine had the most difficult time and as I read the book, I was almost frustrated with the change from Catherine’s to Ann Marie’s stories as I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next in the 1970s. The relationship between Catherine and Gabriel seemed to change so quickly once they moved to Lebanon and I could tell things weren’t going to end well. He became quite controlling and volatile once they moved to his homeland and I could only imagine the terror of being a foreigner without any rights.

This is a beautiful story of a mother and daughter that would go to any lengths to protect and take care of each other. I had tears in my eyes during certain scenes and while I despised both husbands, their characters helped me to understand the sadness, anger, terror, despair and numerous other emotions felt by both CC and Ann Marie.

I loved the glimpses into CC’s life as portions of her journals are deftly woven into the story. Ann Marie learns of a mystery in her life that she didn’t recall from her childhood, and the clues are provided seamlessly throughout the story.

I want to thank the author, the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this story. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Silver’s work.

This was just the kind of book I've been looking for. For the most part it's women's fiction with a bit of suspense thrown in and a nice departure from my typical reads. I was drawn in immediately and I felt like I was watching a (really good) Lifetime Movie while I was reading it.

Told in dual timelines and dual points-of-view, the story shows many things: the bond between a young mother and her daughter, the cultural differences between an American woman and her Lebanese husband, how people can change a lot after marriage, the relationship between a grown woman and her ill and aging mother, long-kept secrets about a family's past, and how sometimes we can still forgive somehow despite how much they have hurt us. All of this in a story with essentially three main characters.

I would definitely recommend this book and plan to check into some of the author's other books!

A love story in three acts - a headstrong young woman's and the attractive foreigner who sweeps her off her feet, the woman fighting to keep their daughter, and the daughter who learns her parents' secrets as her mother lays dying. A familiar story of cross-cultural abduction, in a popular romance genre.

This was a fast paced book that kept my interest.
A young girl from a wealthy family in Greenwich Connecticut, falls in love with a slightly older, and handsome Lebanese businessman, who is visiting his sister. Despite the families objections, Catherine decides she will marry him and after a short time they end up going back to his home country. Pregnant and having a hard time adjusting to her time there and having to play a very different role as a woman than she was used to, she longs for home. Friction arises between them and when certain circumstances arise, where she doesn't feel like she has control of her life, their relationship becomes a series of cat and mouse games.
I would rather the reader find out for themselves what happens in the story, so I will leave it as that.
Very well written and a great story.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of this book