This is very much a story of self discovery through learning about your past…

Harlow and her mom have always been on the run, from what Harlow doesn’t know… and she doesn’t get the opportunity to find out from her mom before she dies in a freak car accident. Her mom’s dying wish, for Harlow to run! She quickly instructs her to a safety deposit box and Harlow must leave her behind…

Before she can even process her mother’s death, she is off running again and she still doesn’t know why. But, upon searching for clues, she discovers her mother had a whole family… a mother and sisters she never knew about. In tracking them down, she may finally have the chance at knowing who she is.

This book is very sapphic which I loved. This is a slower paced book, which at times took me out of the story slightly. I liked the characters and the progression of the ultimate mystery though. Harlow lived a life where she never had the opportunity to explore who was, and we get the chance to see her finally have the possibility to do that.

Overall, the mystery aspect of the story was good, but I was let down by the inter character relationships. All of the interactions between characters felt rather underdeveloped and juvenile.

I don’t know what I expected when I started to read this book. I glimpsed the blurb, but I didn’t read it thoroughly because I find that blurbs can set a book up for failure if it doesn’t accurately describe what the book was about. Looking at the cover, I thought this book would be a thriller, but ultimately it was more of a character study about a teenage girl who finds herself all alone in the world and must navigate her way through to survive.

For as long as she can remember, Harlow and her mother have been on the run. They have moved from town to town at a moment's notice, changing their identities when Cora, Harlow’s mom, senses danger. What danger is this? Harlow doesn’t know because Cora won’t tell her. Cora also won’t tell Harlow much about her life before Harlow was born, and she won’t let her touch her. Cora loves Harlow very much, but she loves her from a distance. Cora isn’t the hugging kind of mother. All these things, the running, the lying, and the lack of physical emotion, leaves Harlow in a head space full of resentment and uncertainty. She wants to believe her mom, but how can she when her mother never tells her what’s going on. She never lets Harlow in, never lets her get too close. So, when Cora dies in a horrible accident, what is Harlow to do? Should she continue running from whatever they were running from or should she find somewhere to settle down?

The journey and character development for Harlow is really the main focus of this book. There are mystery and thriller elements, but they take a back seat to Harlow’s coming of age story as a lonely distraught young woman in a world where she is invisible. The reader goes along with Harlow on her journey back to her mother’s childhood home to discover what Cora was running from. And, the first step to doing that is finding out what happened to her grandmother Eve.

On Harlow’s journey, there are plenty of new experiences for her, potential dangers, and many threats to her both physically and emotionally. But, there is also hope, love, and a feeling of belonging to both a place and family that Harlow develops. And, we get to experience with her all of these new positive things she’s never had before.

Harlow is an exceptionally vulnerable character. She is easy to love and root for. You want nothing but the best for her as she sets out alone. She can come off having a tiny bit more of teenage angst than she needs, but the reader must remember that her upbringing is quite a jarring way to be raised. How would anyone turn out if they were constantly moving, could plant no roots, and had her mother as her only friend?

This book is filled with twists and turns. The beginning is a slow burn mystery and tragedy while the last quarter of the book is a fast paced thriller. It’s filled with twists and turns. The emotional depth and empathy are turned up to the max and executed to their full potential.

Thank you @turnthepagetours and Margaret K. McElderry Books and Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for providing this eArc for review. All opinions are my own.

A girl is forced to uncover her family's dark secrets when her mother dies and leaves her with more questions and answers, however will the answers she find be worth it? Harlow has lived a life on the run with her mom for as long as she can remember. Her mother always moving them from one place to the next, telling Harlow to never look back and that "they" were after her. Yet when a fatal car accident kills her mother and her mother's dying words are telling her to go to a mysterious lockbox and get help from her family, Harlow is baffled because she assumed she never had family other than her mother. Harlow now is lead down a path going through her family's history, moving into a home and town she never knew, and facing the secrets her mother has kept hidden all these years. Yet the more Harlow learns the more she begins to question whether or not this is the family she had been hoping to find. Sometimes the answers you seek are not the ones you want but they're the only ones there are. This one is a small town mystery read and it felt really slow. Unfortunately I was expecting more thriller or spookiness to it, and the book absolutely starts off with a bang and intrigues you, but it just got slower and slower and I found myself getting bored with the mystery. Sadly, this one missed the mark for me and I just found myself not caring that much. The final twist and reveal left a lot to be desired and I just couldn't care for the outcome, I was just glad to have made it to the end of the book. Overall, if you like slow family mysteries then this one is the perfect one for you!

*Thanks Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, Margaret K. McElderry Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. I absolutely DEVOURED this book within 12 hours of opening it. It was really good, and when the story progresses, it was not at ALL what I expected it to be. I really loved this authors approach to trauma and how each person's approach to dealing with it is different. A review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

Another exciting and twisty read from thriller powerhouse Rebecca Barrow! And Don't Look Back tells the story of Harlow, a teen girl, who has been on the run with her mother for her whole life. But when her mother is killed in an accident and Harlow is left with a mess of clues, she must decide whether to keep running or face her past--whatever that past may be. A great thriller for teen and adult readers alike featuring compelling sapphic characters and an intriguing plot!