I was hooked from the jump. 911 dispatcher gets a call from her own daughter and she's in trouble. Rape-Murder-Missing Teen. The book had all the makings of a great read - it did end up falling flat. I found myself skimming parts of it. I figured out who dun it. There were parts I felt the author could have really taken the story and ran with it - but again - they fell flat.

Some of the story was convoluted and at points confusing.

All in all - it was a decent book - had some good parts. I would definitely give it a chance.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

While I absolutely loved the writing style and devoured this book, it was far too anti-cop for this police wife. Too many times were incorrect things mentioned, like how bad cops were or how they always got off, no matter what they do. I had Hope's. There was a chance this book could recover. But really, it just got more and more anti-cop as it went on.

I get it, you wrote this because you clearly believe it's a problem, you even say so after the book, but let's be real. You wrote it because it's what's going on in America right now. Instead of helping the problem, you're adding fuel to the fire. You're making people believe they can't trust the cops and that they're truly there to "kill the black man" as Kevin says, whether it's in the street or in his own home.

Instead of imagining a corrupt force, why not put yourself in a real investigation into police life and ride the streets for a few weeks. Then, let me see your attitude. Put that uniform on and see the hatred you get. Be the Philadelphia police, taking shots, knowing your friends have been hurt, while being hurled insults and shoves from the "community" you're protecting.

Your writing is amazing but you're a part of the problem with America. You're helping the divide; instilling fear and mistrust when you had a chance to help it.

There wasn't one positive police presence in this book and for that, I will not and cannot reccomend it.

This book starts with a bang and just goes rolling along with a fast speed!
A whole bunch of corrupt cops in a small town. The police chief's own daughter wakes up in a nightmare which proceeds to send the chief to the hospital. That leaves JoJo, the daughter, and Laurie, her mother and a 911 dispatcher , to figure out what in the world is going on!
My heart broke for JoJo and her friend Harper... Who is no where to be found. Harper is a girl that has a lot of trauma happen to her and it got worse as the book went on.

Stolen Things is one of several ARCs I’ve read coming out on August 20, and it is ah-may-zing. Thanks so much to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Stolen Things starts off full steam ahead. Laurie works as a 911 dispatcher in a small Northern California town. The entire law enforcement department is an extension of her own family: her husband is the police chief, and their teenage daughter, Jojo, has grown up around the force. So when Laurie is working the night shift and receives a 911 call from her own daughter, the entire department springs into action to help. Jojo wakes up from a drugged state with no memory of how she wound up in the home of her friend, Kevin, a pro football player who is active in an anti-police brutality group. She has no idea where her best friend Harper is, who went missing sometime during the same night. Terrified and traumatized, Jojo feels like she has to do something to help, so she begins searching Harper’s social media to look for clues about her whereabouts…and instead uncovers a horrible secret. Jojo thought she knew everything about Harper, but as she and Laurie discover more and more about her secrets, they realize they can’t trust anyone else to help them – not even those they hold closest and most dear. (dun dun dun)

This debut from Herron is seriously breath-taking. I was messaging my friends after the very first chapter, telling them how freaking good this book is. You know any book that has me telling people about it within the first few pages is a kick-ass book. I am so, so happy I was able to read this one early, and I’m telling you all – you need to check it out.

Okay, anyway – time for my rating deets!

Plot – 2/2: You should be able to tell from the synopsis that the plot of Stolen Things is WILD. A mom on the receiving end of a 911 call from her daughter? Yep, holy crap. The way the author set up so much within the story – so many issues like interracial marriage, racism, sexual orientation, physical and sexual assault survivorship, police brutality, etc – without making the plot feel convoluted or over the top was so impressive. A thriller that gets you thinking about multiple issues like this while maintaining an unputdownable story arc is one excellent thriller.

Writing – 2/2: As I said, Herron puts a TON in this book. And she writes about all the incredibly sensitive, difficult topics with such grace and understanding and real emotion that you really feel a connection with the story. Her writing makes you think, while also making you continue to want to read “just one more chapter.”

Thrills/Suspense – 2/2: Yup. Those are here. I mean, obviously. Stolen Things is action packed while also keeping you guessing what the heck is going on. What happened to Jojo? Where is Harper? Who can really be trusted? The twists toward the end, mixed with a TON of “holy crap shit is going down” moments seriously makes it impossible to stop reading once you reach the last half of the book.

Characters – 2/2: Okay, I LOVE Jojo. She is so honest and brave and loyal – she is seriously everything I would want any teenage daughter of mine to be. She stands up for what she believes in and is not afraid to call shit out when she sees it. She also just desperately wants to be loved, while going through all the typical teenage issues with her family. Seeing her growth throughout the book was so great. Also, Laurie – what a mom. Like, the ultimate protective mama bear. I LOVED that Herron wrote her as a mom that actually listens and believes her daughter, even when what Jojo was saying was hard to hear. The strength in Laurie was amazing.

Feel – 2/2: Can you tell I liked this one yet? 😉 This book had it all – thrills, action, emotional issues, strong female characters – the works. It definitely isn’t an easy read; some major plot points would likely be hard for some readers, but Herron handles everything with such great emotional intelligence, it is worth the read.

A solid 10/10 makes this another 5 star read! Happy reading, friends! Go snag this one on August 20th!

3.75 stars

A 911 dispatcher receives a call. It's her daughter. What would you do?

Writing: ★★★★ 1/2
Concept: ★★★★
Reveals: ★★★
Suspense: ★★★★

Have you ever had a thriller where the writing was so good, so intense, that you enjoy yourself even as the plot takes off in odd directions? Yeah, that's Stolen Things.

Laurie is a 911 dispatcher. Her husband, Omid, is the local police chief. One day at work, the woman on the other end of the line isn't a stranger—it's Laurie's daughter, Jojo, and she's been drugged, assaulted, and left in an unknown location.

There is no force stronger than a determined woman with nothing to lose and everything to save.

Laurie, Omid, and the police team find Jojo quickly and discover that she's in the home of famously anti-police pro football player Kevin Leeds. Leeds' athletic trainer is found dead near Jojo. Jojo's friend, Harper Cunningham, is still missing. What happened?

Stolen Things takes off like a rocket. A woman on a mission, Laurie commits to finding the perpetrator and avenging her daughter's assault with a vengeance that was one of the reasons she voluntarily took herself of the police force—Laurie didn't trust herself to act rationally when it came down to the wire. Well, now it's down to the wire. And Laurie says f*** it.

One of the many things I loved about Stolen Things was its portrayal of motherhood as a source of strength, not weakness. Laurie was a strong character, and while some of her decisions where definitely questionable, I have to admit that I understood them. Her choices were bad or more bad, and she chose based on what would be the best for her family. There was a ruthlessness that I admired.

Things I didn't like:
The writing was killer, but the references to this exact place in time were numerous. As I was reading, I was able to resonate with certain cultural references, but at the same time it kept throwing me out of the story as I was reminded that this story was happening NOW, in 2019. I'm not sure these references will hold up in 5 years. I also struggled with author's intense opinions shining through the mystery. Now, for the most part I was in agreement with the author's stance, but just because I agreed doesn't mean it was not still distracting—the mystery should have been the forefront.

A friend of mine actually lived through a shockingly similar situation to the one being depicted in the book. I always find mother/daughter stories a bit hard to take, but this one is just too close to home. Not for me.

Wow! What a Roller coaster of a ride this book is. A riveting page turner that I couldn't read fast enough. Laurie is a 911 dispatcher on duty when she gets a call that every parent dreads. It's her daughter Jojo calling for help but she doesn't know where she is and can't remember what happened. It's discovered that she has been drugged and raped, there's a dead body on the premises and her best friend Harper is missing. The house belongs to Kevin who's a young pro football player and the immediate suspect. As the hunt for Harper begins Laurie finds herself having to deal with everything alone when her husband Omid, the chief of police, has a heart attack.
This book goes way past being just a story about trying to find a missing girl. It's about love, family and loyalty. It's also not for the faint of heart, parts of it can be pretty difficult to read. If you like suspense with many changes of direction and an....oh my goodness I didn't see that coming!...ending then Stolen Things is for you.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book long ago on Netgalley and it has just been sitting there for way too long. Wow, this book keeps you on your toes from literally the first page to the last. I loved that we were seeing everything from the mother and daughters POV. I can honestly say I didn't see half the twists coming because they were almost just too hard to believe. I think what I most enjoyed about this book and what really kept me reading is the actual backstory to the book itself. The author of Stolen Things was a dispatcher for 17 years and this book is inspired loosely by actual events. There are alot of sensitive topics discussed- rape, police brutality, corruption, and racism are just some of the main topics that you'll see in this book. Although, I didn't 100% agree with the way the police were characterized it was still a super quick read with nothing but twists and turns, so I'm not going to let that takeaway from how great the book was.

“They all had morning breath even though it was afternoon, and while it should have been disgusting, Jojo realized that she almost liked it. They smelled like a den of animals.
She could be feral if she needed to be.”

I rated this book 4 stars because it kept me engaged in the story for pretty much the entire time I was reading it. I finished the whole book on a 5 hour car ride because I just didn’t want to put it down. It did drag a little bit in some parts in the middle, but overall it was fantastically written and I felt the pace of the story was well done.

I’m usually relatively good at figuring out mysteries. But surprisingly, I didn’t see a lot of the twists coming in Stolen Things- but the twists weren’t there for shock value. After things had been revealed I could see the clues and build up.

Herron touches on a lot of important political topics. I can see why some reviewers have said there’s a little too much of the author’s views. But in today’s society sometimes you need to be blunt.

I recommend this book to lovers of thriller books with mix of politics.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Laurie is a 911 dispatcher...one night, a call comes in, and it's her daughter, JoJo, in distress.

JoJo has been sexually assaulted, is in a famous man's home, and there is another man, dead.

This one had some twists and turns that I didn't see coming. Some of the material was hard to read, but I did enjoy the book.

Would recommend to those that enjoy a good suspenseful novel.

Stolen Things starts out with an absolute bang. Imagine you're a 911 Dispatcher (a job I could never do and I have the utmost respect for those who do) you receive a 911 call and on the end of the line is your 16 year old daughter who is disoriented and doesn't know where she is. That is how this book starts out. It took me a little while to finish this book - not because I didn't like it but because parts of it are a little difficult to take in. The book has some difficult subjects in it such as rape of a 16 year old, murder, suicide and police corruption so this book may not be for every reader. The writing is excellent however and I just chose to read it in sections at a time. The main characters of this book are Laurie who is a police dispatcher and her daughter Jojo who is 16 years old. Laurie's husband and Jojo's father is Omid who is the Police chief. JoJo has grown up around the police department and everyone is like family to her. Jojo is located at a house belonging to a professional football player and police discover that someone has been murdered there. It also comes to light that Jojo's long time best friend Harper is missing. The book slows down a bit after the initial start and continues with trying to find out who raped Jojo and also where is Harper? Has someone kidnapped her - what's happened to her - she's just disappeared. Omid becomes hospitalized and so Laurie and Jojo continue their search. They learn there are some people within the police department who have been like their family that they can't truly trust and so they continue their search on their own. Overall I think this was a great book that covered some difficult subjects. I give this book 4 stars.

Jojo Ahmadi is the daughter of the police chief and 911 dispatcher. When she finds herself needing 911, her mother is literally the one to answer the call that will change their lives forever.

This book was fast paced and full of suspenseful twists and turns. The author certainly knows how to write strong women who don’t back down or leave the “heavy lifting” to the men, which is much appreciated. While the ending left a little to be desired, it was certainly a worth-while read and engaging thriller which will be recommended by myself.

This book was so good. It kept you guessing right up until the end. I completely loved it. Highly highly recommend it!!!

What’s a kid to do when her father is the police chief and her mother is a 911 dispatcher for the same department? Really, so many of the cops in the station know JoJo and consider her to be a part of their cop family that she may just as well have grown up inside the police station. That means that whatever she gets into outside the home is quickly going to get back to her parents. But the time that JoJo and her best friend Harper were caught trying to steal from a jewelry store, they were only fourteen years old so they were able to put a bad situation behind them without ruining the rest their lives. Now, however, the girls are both 16, and the trouble they are flirting with is a whole lot more dangerous than stealing something from a jewelry store. The girls do not look like kids anymore, and the wrong kind of men have noticed.

JoJo’s mother has been a 911 operator for almost twenty years so not much surprises her anymore. But that changes on the day Laurie answers a 911-call only to recognize that the voice on the other end of the line pleading for help belongs to her own daughter. JoJo cannot move, does not know where she is, and has no idea how she got there. Even worse, JoJo cannot figure out what happened to her before or while she was unconscious, but the pain she is in indicates that she may have been raped. And then JoJo remembers that Harper was with her – but now Harper is nowhere to be found.

JoJo’s police family pulls out all the stops to figure out what happened to her and Harper and to catch the people responsible. And JoJo would expect nothing less of them. But do they really?

JoJo Ahmadi is as impatient as she is smart – and she’s very smart. So, when the cops don’t seem to be making much progress, she decides to do a little investigating of her own. And what she learns from a deep dive into Harper’s social media scares her to death. Harper, it appears, was a little too cozy with some of the cops for her own good, and now JoJo and her mother don’t know whom to trust. Which cops are playing it straight, and which ones have good reason to make sure that Harper is never found? Just what are they willing to do to keep JoJo and her mother from learning the truth?

R.H. Herron’s novel is a solid thriller that pushes all the proper socially-conscious buttons. There are gay characters, characters questioning their sexuality, racist cops, plain old bad cops, a black NFL quarterback speaking out about the way blacks are mistreated by the criminal justice system, and a group of protesters preparing to take to the streets again to protest police brutality (a group, as it turns out, that JoJo and Harper have themselves joined). Stolen Things is definitely a thriller with a social message, but that message at times can get heavy-handed enough to be a distraction to the book’s central plot. Still, this is a page-turner that crime thriller fans should take a look at.

Stolen Things by R. H. Herron is a dynamic read!

Laurie is a 911 dispatcher and one night, she answers a call from her own daughter, Jojo who has been drugged, and raped, while someone else in the house slept, and the other one was killed. Jojo can’t remember that happened or how she ended up in Kevin’s house. Kevin is arrested, but Jojo’s friend Harper is still missing. Jojo looks into Harper's social media and discovers many things she questions.

There are a few trigger warnings with this book: sexual assault, kidnapping, police brutality. I was hooked and wanted to know more about Jojo and Harper's characters and why they were involved with older men. There are a number of twists along the way, especially the last third of the book. Thanks for the wild ride!

This twisting and heart-wrenching novel begins with a bang and doesn't slow down for the entire length of the book. An emergency dispatcher is having a typical, boring night at work when her daughter calls through the line. With no memory of the night's events, the mom and daughter's attempts to piece the missing night together draws them into a conspiracy that threatens to destroy everything they care about.

Stolen Things is timely in its handling of issues such as: sexual assault, police brutality, Black Lives Matter, homophobia, and kneeling for the national anthem. Told in alternating points of view, the mother and daughter relationship that this novel hinges on is believable - with the daughter alternating between trying to seem like a "grown up" whilst still needing her mother in the face of events, and the mother wondering just what lengths she will go to to protect her child.

A quick and compulsive read that discusses today's pertinent topics, I'm excited to see what's in this author's future.

Laurie is a 911 dispatcher who generally enjoys her job, until the night she answers a call from her own daughter. Jojo has been drugged, and raped, while someone else in the house slept, and the other one was killed. Jojo can’t remember anything that happened or how she ended up in Kevin’s house. Kevin is immediately arrested, but Jojo’s friend Harper is still missing. Jojo starts a deep dive into Harpers social media and discovers that Harpers life, and the lives of the cops that work for her father, are not at all what they seemed.

Holy psychopath. I really can’t say much more without giving anything away. This book does have some trigger warnings: sexual assault, kidnapping, police brutality. Overall this book kept me hooked. I wanted to know what had happened to Jojo, and Harper, plus why Harper was spending her time with all these much older men. Laurie and Jojo were both pretty badass which I loved.

My anxiety was through the roof. I was on a rollercoaster of thrills and emotions up until the every end. I’m very pro cop so this was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. All in all a good book wrapped up everything nicely in the end even though I felt it a bit rushed.

Stolen Things by R.H. Heron is a suspense thriller that was so very well written. This is the debut novel for this author, and after reading this story, I will most definitely read her again. Stolen Things started with a bang, as we met our heroine, Laurie Ahmadi, immediately. Laurie has worked as a 911 police dispatcher for 20 years (she is a former cop), and picks up a phone call that is every parent’s nightmare. The person on the other end is her 16 year old daughter, Jojo, who is crying for help, not knowing where she is and just woke up from being drugged. Laurie’s husband Omid (police chief) is the first to arrive on the scene with other members of his force, with Laurie not far behind.

A dead body is discovered in a closet, and in another room of the house, an NFL player is woken from sleep, and immediately arrested. Kevin (NFL player) remembers nothing, as he too may have been drugged, but the police do not believe him, and Laurie wants desperately to hurt him for what he did to her daughter. Jojo will explain that Kevin is her friend, and he would never hurt her; but no one believes it.

With Jojo in hospital, being examined, Laurie confirms that Jojo was raped, and pushes herself into the investigation, despite Omid and other police officers try to stop her. Jojo remembers that she went out with her friend Harper that night, and Harper is missing. Once Jojo is released from the hospital, she is determined to help her mother investigate the case, as well as try to find Harper.

What follows is an exciting, nonstop action packed story that kept me glued to my seat. Jojo reveals some of her secret life;, helping Harper & Kevin working for the CapB activist movement (Citizens Against Police Brutality. She begins to find out more information on the internet, as well as from phone messages on Harper’s phone, which may involve the police department. This will force Laurie to secretly try to look into the police department records, causing havoc in the police station, and with Omid, who is in hospital after a heart attack. With Harper missing, and Jojo insistence the Kevin is a good guy, Laurie begins to believe her, and focuses on the department.

To tell too much more would be spoilers, and throughout the who book, things change often. There are a number of twists along the way, especially the last third of the book. Stolen Things was so very well written by Heron, and does cover a number of topics: murder, rape, police brutality, politics, race, homosexuality, etc.
Stolen Things is a wonderful thriller, and great mystery that has you unable to put the book down. I strongly suggest you read this debut novel by R.H. Heron

I was drawn to this book by the cover and was sucked in by the story and suspense! Stolen Things by R.H. Herron definitely kept me guessing until the last chapter. The begins with JoJo calling 911 and asking for help. She woke up in a strange place and has no recollection of how she arrived there. But she knew her mom, Laurie would be able to find her. The story begins to unravel. Harper, JoJo's best friend, is still missing. JoJo was raped and left alone. Who was the rapist and who has Harper? Hutton hits on so many different topics in her book, from rape to the hot topics in the media today with cops and athletes. This books makes you think and makes you see behind the face shield and badge.
I can see this book being the first in a series with Laurie, the 911 dispatcher. Herron didn't over complicate things with too many characters, she kept it concise and sped along with her story. Her chapters were short and the story read very easy. The perfect book to sneak in little chapters here and there while doing chores or running about town with the kids.
Overall, I give this book two thumbs up! I will be recommending this book to others. I would love to meet you with Laurie and JoJo again! Special thanks to NetGalley, the Dutton Penguin Group, and R.H. Hutton for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review!
#StolenThings #NetGalley