William Morrow Paperbacks and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of The Lucky One. I voluntarily chose to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Alice was stolen from her backyard when she was a child, but, luckily, her policeman father was able to find her within 24 hours. As an adult, Alice volunteers for a website called The Doe Pages, dedicated to connecting the dots and finding lost loved ones. When Alice sees a face she recognizes, which subsequently disappears from the site, will her search for the truth lead to danger?

The author does not do a good job of connecting the characters to the story, leaving main character Alice, among others, mainly flat. The truth of the past is delivered with such dispassion that it barely makes a blip in the plot. I expected more from this book because of the strength of the premise, so I was disappointed. For these reasons, I would not recommend it to other readers.

When something tragic happens in our lives, some people try to push away the memories, while others run toward them. Alice was kidnapped as a child, but was luckily rescued by her policeman father within twenty-four hours of being taken. She now spends her free time helping solve the mysteries of missing persons on a website called The Doe Pages, where she attempts to identify those who have vanished into thin air and reconnect them with their families. But what happens when the very man who kidnapped her appears on The Doe Pages as a missing person? Alice is determined to track him down and solve the mystery of her childhood kidnapping at all costs.

Lori Rader-Day's The Lucky One is a good, not great, suspense thriller. This book contains all of the elements that will keep any fan of the genre happy - an intricately-plotted mystery, layered backstories, a plot twist ending - but it ran a little too slow and clunky for my personal tastes. There is a lot going on in this story of missing memories and shady dealings, and I therefore believe it would benefit either from a faster pace or a more streamlined plot. The slower pace and complicated storyline made it difficult to maintain my focus and stay invested in the plot. On the other hand, Rader-Day builds interest in The Lucky One by weaving together the lives of two different women who are mysteriously connected to the same questionable man. I was compelled to keep reading just to find out how the storylines of the women tie together in the end.

Read The Lucky One if you are looking for a solid suspenseful read.

By no means was this book "bad", but for one that had so much going on, it left me wanting MORE. I made it about 40% through, and stopped at that point. I will not be reviewing this book elsewhere, at least not until I am able to come back and attempt to reread it.

It took me a little while to get into this one, it didn't pull me in the way I was hoping. I did get interested in it to see where things were going but to be 100 I just didn't find the wow factor many others may have. I wished it was more action-packed I guess.
It was good I am not saying by any means that it was poorly written it was not. I think I was just in the mood for more action and drama and I feel like I didn't really get that until I got closer to the end of the book.

Stolen from her home as a child, Alice was found by her Policeman father within 24 hours and returned home. Now as an adult, she helps find the missing and returns them to their loved ones. Never did she imagine that she would recognize the face of a man who took her, nor did she ever imagine that she’d see him again. Now she’s hell bent on finding him before he hurts others and she’ll stop at nothing to do it.

“The Lucky One” had a lot going on throughout, while including a lot of different moving parts. While I enjoyed it, I felt like the puzzle pieces never quite fit properly, and left a lot to be desired. This may simply have been the case of my being the wrong reader for this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an arc of this novel.

2.5*
After reading the premise for this book I knew I had to have it!

Alice was kidnapped right out of her own front yard! But thankfully and luckily her father was able to find and bring her back home. Did I mention he just happened to be a police officer too?!💁🏻‍♀️

Years later Alice volunteers on a website to help reunite missing people with their families. When she sees a profile of a man who she believes kidnapped her all those years ago, suddenly she is compelled to dig deeper to find him. Little does she know what lies ahead.

Oh I wish this book would have worked for me. Unfortunately I never connected with the writing and therefore with the characters. I was left frustrated that such a great premise left me wanting so much more.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins.

"From the acclaimed author of Under A Dark Sky comes an unforgettable, chilling novel about a young woman who recognizes the man who kidnapped her as a child, setting off a search for justice, and into danger.

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers."

I enjoyed this book. It was a suspenseful read. It opened me up to a whole new world of crime fighters on Facebook. I watched "Dont' F**K with Cats" on Netflix right after this. It was an interesting connection to the novel in the sense that there are groups on Facebook dedicated to helping others either solve old crimes, find missing people, etc.
It is an interesting and suspenseful read.

I couldn’t finish this one. Was too slow burning for my liking. As a DNF novel, I wouldn’t rate it, but since that’s not an option on NG, I give it 3 stars not to affect the rest, more thorough, reviewers.

Although, this was an okay book. I really didn't like either character that well. The interactions with everyone seemed superficial. Maybe its because I am an older reader but I thought the ups and downs in emotions between Merrily and Alice was too much. I often wanted to say grow up!

This book got crazier and crazier and crazier. Okay, not true - the crazy didn't start until probably 75% in. But boy did it get absolutely bonkers by the end. There was just... A lot going on. One woman researching her own childhood kidnapping? Fine. A different woman researching the disappearance of her mother's old boyfriend who she stayed close with? Also fine. But the way those two stories converged... That was messy.

I suppose, with the way the climax played out, I really wanted a thriller. This wasn't that. It was a gently unfolding mystery. But in order to really pull off bonkers like this, it has to be a thriller. You can't just be thrown in to the crazy suddenly at 75% - you have to be eased in with frequent, short trips to crazytown.

This is my third Rader-Day novel - not my favorite, but she writes well enough that I would read another.

This may seem like a simple "what happens after a school shooting" story, but I didn't expect to catch any feelings like this. May is a survivor of a school shooting, after her school shuts down due to the shooting,she is transferred to another high school. There she meets Zach, the son of the attorney defending the shooter.

This story goes through events that happened the day of, days before, and a year after. It goes through how many people are affected by such a tragic event. Including some most people dont think about.

This was a good read, if you can handle this type of story, please read it.

This was probably one of my least favorite Lori Rader-Day books. It was good but her writing missed the mark for me this time.
I was upset that it was leading up to a slow burn, which I appreciate, but it dragged for me towards the middle. And although it wasn't A bad read of A girl who escaped her abductor, sorry was rescued by her dad from him, only to see him years later pop up online. It just didn't tie up loose ends and made me mad, because I was just expecting more.

A special thanks to Harper Collins Publishers and William Day paperbacks and NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Lucky One has an interesting premise of a former kidnap victim volunteering to help other find other missing people and possibly stumbling across her kidnapper. I did like how it switched between a couple different points of view as well as message boards. However, I couldn’t get as invested in the main characters as I would have liked and had to make myself keep reading it. It was a good read, but not great.
Thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins, and the author Lori Rader-Day for a digital review copy. This story was published February 4, 2020

The Lucky One is the first Lori Rader-Day novel I have read and it will not be the last! Alice thought of herself as one of the lucky ones, rescued by her father from a kidnapper she barely remembers those hours she was missing as a child. However, she has not truly forgotten. She is obsessed with finding others who are missing and volunteers on a web-site dedicated to finding the missing. Working for her dad's successful company, she spends most of her free time surfing the Doe Pages. When she recognizes a missing person on the site-a mystery begins as Alice recognizes her kidnapper. This leads to a desperate search and chase as she unites with other volunteers and a young woman named Merrily who is also searching for the truth. What follows is a fast-paced mystery that will keep you up at night desperate to know the ending!

The story begins a little slow and at first I thought it may be a bit hard to become engaged but the book quickly picks up the pace as it becomes clear all is not what it seems. Not knowing who you can trust I found myself considering various theories and while some were proven true the revelations were startling and conclusion satisfying. I enjoy how Rader-Day uses different techniques to throw off the reader and is able steadily build suspense.

Thank you to the publisher, writer and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

What does a child remember? How perfect or imperfect are our parents? This thriller tackles these questions and more as it takes us down a path of perception vs memory. Simple obsession turns into a nightmare path that eventually leads to friendship, family and discovery of self. This is one book you won't be able to put down.

This one missed the mark for me a little bit. I didn’t really care for the characters and at times had to suspend my believe. Sadly just ok for me. Thank you publisher and netgalley for this arc in exchange of an honest review.

Favorite Quotes:

A cake of angels and beauty itself, chocolate on top of chocolate, like a last request before execution. Merrily had passed out in a food coma in her old room and had to borrow the twinset and skirt from her mom’s closet for work… Merrily looked like a giraffe dressed for church, but she still looked better than the women in the front office any day of the week. Fact.

“I turned thirty. Thirty.” … Thirty was a monster. She’d been pursued by it and now here it sat in her lap, breathing its stink on her. Her age would ruin everything, if not this year, then soon.

“There’s my Alice in Wonderland.” Alice got up and met him for a hug. He couldn’t swing her off her feet anymore, but the old nickname never failed to shrink her to fit the tiny door of childhood.

Every sweet thing about Uncle Jim, Jimmy could ruin like a funhouse mirror. She liked to think that Jimmy was adopted, some changeling JimBig and his ex-wife had found and taken home.

Merrily had always wished for a baby brother or sister, but she needn’t have bothered. Her own mother provided all the mischief she could handle… Why were the grown-ups in her life so damaged and needy?


My Review:

This gripping, tautly written, and twisty book had me in knots and frequently chewing on my lips and picking at my ragged cuticles, which were merely the early clues that this was going to be a 5-Star read. Each character was oddly compelling although deeply flawed and not all that admirable. Neither of the two main characters, Merrily and Alice, were among the sharpest tools in the shed and I frequently wanted to schedule each of them a colonoscopy to search for their misplaced craniums.

The storylines were shrewdly crafted, cunningly paced, and riveting with intrigue while fraught with tension, family secrets, and impending peril. This was my first experience with the diabolically clever storytelling of Lori Rader-Day and in my expert analysis - she may well be a high priestess of the word voodoo as I was totally sucked into her vortex, tumbled around, and spit back out hours later feeling rather stunned, dazed, and pleasantly amazed.

The Lucky One by Lori Rader-Day is another slow burn of a novel. A suspense, it takes time to unfold so you can read slowly and without fear of missing something important because your eyes and brain are working overtime to keep up with the story.

The novel is about Alice, the “lucky one” who was stolen as a child but was found later. She volunteers for a website that is committed to tracking down people who have gone missing. Imagine her reaction when she sees the person who abducted her as a child. Later, the post is deleted but its too late. She is now set on finding this man.

The search is dark and twisty, I cannot imagine being Alice and dealing with a traumatic event then hunting for the person who committed the crime.

Here’s the official synopsis:

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

I thought this was a great premise for a story and there was so much intrigue. I feel like it could be a true crime story that I’d listen to on a podcast!

The Lucky One is a slow burn suspense novel that shares the story of a woman who was previously kidnapped and is now looking for answers. While I enjoy a character-driven novel, I struggled to connect with these characters (I found them dislikable in general) which caused me to lose interest in the storyline.

I love a book with imperfect characters and some dysfunction but as much as I had hoped to, this one just didn't resonate with me. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I could not put this one down!! I had to know what was going on and I was definitely surprised by the ending. Absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it.