This story starts off with Detective Chelsea Calhoun learning that Ellie Black has returned after being missing for two years. Calhoun is determined to learn where Ellie has been and what happened during that time.

I found this to be a compelling story that I read in just a couple sittings. I have some mixed feelings and don’t think it is one I would reread or press into the hands of friends but I’m glad I read it and stuck with it to see how it ended.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free ebook to review.

Ellie Black has been found after being gone for 2 years. She is not the same and everybody is worried. Chelsea is the detective in charge of the case and she is a bulldog to solve the case. She can get no answers and keeps trying . I found the plot very good andwas very riveting., I recommend this book for all thriller readers.

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean is a captivating and compelling suspense-filled novel. Ellie Black disappeared after leaving a party. No sightings for two years, then she is discovered by hikers in a bloody sweatshirt, malnourished and terrified. Chelsey Calhoun, a Detective in the Family Services department is assigned Ellie's case. Chelsey lost her sister Lydia to violence fifteen years earlier, and that loss impacted her career choice and all of her relationships. The Return of Ellie Black provides insights into what it.would be like to be held captive and then try to adjust to day to day life after. It also gives insights into how loss can have long term ramifications in one's life as well as the dedication and single focus a police officer brings to each case. It is a very readable and satisfying novel. Thank you to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Publishing and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book. 3.5 stars.

I have to be honest that I was initially a little hesitant to pick up The Return of Ellie Black, knowing that the author Emiko Jean has previously published YA and contemporary romance. Would she really be able to switch gears yet again and pull off an engaging literary thriller? I’m so happy to report that not only did she pull it off, but she totally stuck the landing in delivering a propulsive page turner that is surely going to have mass appeal! I’m admittedly a little picky when it comes to “thrillers” that I enjoy - nothing too gorey or supernatural, a smart story that’s original yet not too complex to be overly confusing, and a plot-line that is at least somewhat within the realm of possibility - and Jean hits all those marks and more with Ellie Black’s story.

The story follows Chelsey, a young woman following in her father’s footsteps in becoming part of the PD force and who won’t ever forget her first case as a detective that investigated the disappearance of teenager Ellie Black. Losing her own sister as a teenager around the same age only gives more reason for Chelsey to be completely invested in Ellie’s case. Now that Ellie has suddenly reappeared two years later, Chelsey is more motivated than ever to get to the bottom of Ellie’s time missing and to determine whether connections exist to additional cases of missing girls around the same time, and perhaps even to her own sister’s case 15 years before.

I was completely drawn in from beginning to end, and the prose had that “unputdownable” quality that kept me longing to know how it was all going to come together. There were a couple perfectly plotted twists that made me gasp, the pacing was excellent, and I was thoroughly entertained the whole way through. I particularly enjoyed how the author took the story above and beyond a typical “popcorn thriller” by adding depth with themes like past trauma, sexism, grief and loss, and even adoption. If anything, I felt like there might have been some room to pull back on the heavy-handedness of some of these themes or perhaps to streamline a little more to focus on the ones that truly added to the story versus those tossed in just for more representation. And on the topic of heavy themes like trauma, sensitive readers absolutely need to check trigger warnings, as there were certainly parts that were incredibly disturbing and hard to imagine.

I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to stretch my bookish comfort zone a little further into this genre. I can see this one being quite the crowd-pleaser this summer! Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I have read a LOT of thrillers and mysteries in my day, but this has got to be one of the most well-written ones I’ve come across. It’s also definitely one of the more disturbing books I’ve read, and that vibe stayed with me after each reading session I had.

The Return of Ellie Black, by Emiko Jean, is a novel about a 17-year-old girl who returns after being missing for two years. She isn’t super forthcoming about what she’s endured or who took her. Detective Chelsey Calhoun must investigate the truth of what happened to Ellie (and what other cases might be attached to her disappearance). Chelsey’s drive stems from her own sister’s disappearance, which helps to create an intriguing theme of male rage and female endangerment throughout the story.

There were a lot of elements of this book that were intense and very dark. But that feeling of unease was so appropriate to Ellie’s case. I especially appreciated that Jean allows us into Ellie’s world while she was away. It helped to fully flesh out the story. The best part of this book is that there were several surprises that I didn’t see coming (especially the final major reveals), and one twist completely blew my mind.

I’m immediately signing up for Jean’s fan club, and will read anything she puts out next!

This was pretty good. I really had no expectations going in, and I was surprised how well-written and well-thought-out it was. The use of different points-of-view was effective, Ellie's POV especially. You could feel the pain and grime in her existence. Detective Chelsey is a similarly-damaged soul, with her own crosses to bear. The author skillfully wove disparate stories together -- I'm surprised it's a first novel.

Recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being given freely.

I received a complimentary copy of this book "The Return of Ellie Black" and all opinions expressed are my own. I am giving this 2 stars which is an okay book. I didn't really hate it but really about halfway through it fell short. I kept reading wondering how it would end and I was disappointed in the ending. It seemed wrong. The whole end just brought everything down for me.

What a great book. I was immediately drawn in to this missing person story and after a little bit knew it was going to be so much more.
There was mystery, suspense and overall a great pace. Detective Chelsey Calhoun was a great character and enjoyed how her personal experience with her sisters disappearance showed strength and determination to help others.

Hard-hitting and suspenseful to the core!

Thanks NetGalley, Simon and Schuster for the ARC! I am so glad I got to read this brilliant book.

I highly recommend you dive in blind into this. The title in itself is quite revealing!

I have read and loved #MikaInRealLife by Emiko Jean and have a couple of her YA books on my TBR. But I am truly blown away by how well she has written a mystery thriller this time. She is so versatile and can write across several genres. Kudos 👏

Everything is simply flawless in execution, right from the first page. The characters of Ellie and Detective Calhoun are so very well drawn, explored in depth and realistic. The smart plot construction is water-tight and the layered storyline development is what sets this thriller apart. The setting is perfection too – an isolated coastal town, with a forest, unpredictable sea and weather.

As the book progresses, there were many times I wanted to shake Ellie and give her a piece of my mind. Only when the mystery thickens and the suspense gets unbearably suffocating, do the impossible circumstances behind her behavior get revealed.

The author deals with heavy subject matter here – emotional and physical abuse endured by victims of kidnap, the unimaginable trauma and the sheer lengths humans can go to for survival. At times things were so disturbing, causing our stomachs to roil, as we seethed with rage and cried tears of anguish.

A galore of curveballs come our way towards the end and I can guarantee it’s highly unlikely to guess the cleverly crafted twists, the underlying complex threads and the seamless interlinking of the lives of the main protagonists.

I can only hope Jean writes more such masterfully thought out thrillers!

Thriller lovers, run! Don't walk.

Reader, how I gasped! I go through a lot of mystery novels and thrillers, so very few plot twists truly surprise me anymore. The Return Of Ellie Black, however, had me almost completely wrong-footed throughout. I can hardly believe that this is Emiko Jean’s debut thriller. It’s so perfectly plotted and seeded, and I fell for every single red herring she wrote into her story. What a terrific way to kick off the thriller-writing aspect of an already solid fiction-writing career!

Which, of course, leads me to fear accidentally giving away any spoilers while discussing this absolute page-turner of a novel. What I can safely say is that our heroine Chelsey Calhoun became a cop to follow in her police chief father’s footsteps. She joined the police force of her Coldwell, Washington hometown and worked her way up to the position of detective in its Family Services department. So she’s the investigator to call when 19 year-old Ellie Black, missing for the past two years, suddenly emerges from the Capitol State Forest. Chelsey had originally caught the missing persons case back when Ellie first disappeared. Ellie’s parents, Kat and Jimmy, had done everything they could to help Chelsey bring Ellie home to them, including volunteering as much information about their daughter as possible:

QUOTE
All these details to show how special Ellie was. Proof she deserved to be searched for, to be found. There was no way Kat could know a dollar figure was attached to each case. A careful calculation multiplied by parents’ wealth, then divided by race and religion. The poorer and darker a girl, the less funds and time the department allocated to her rescue–after all, the public is a little less outraged when those types of girls go missing. Maybe Ellie’s mom could sense it–some daughters were worth more than others. This was not a viewpoint Chelsey subscribed to. But it was a reality, even if she didn’t want to believe it.
END QUOTE

Chelsey isn’t jaded, exactly, but she has grimly realistic expectations of the world around her that leave little room for optimism. While this makes her a good investigator, it doesn’t improve her less than stellar people skills, whether on the job or in her personal life. Being the adopted Japanese daughter of a very white family never helped with that either, especially when she was growing up. Her adoptive parents did their best, but it was really their birth daughter, her older sister Lydia, who made her feel safe and accepted and just a smidge less like a social outcast.

Lydia’s disappearance when they were teenagers was thus an especially crushing blow for Chelsey, even before the confirmation of Lydia’s death tore their family apart. In order to cope, their father taught Chelsey self-defense and wilderness survival skills, lessons she embraced, though not entirely without reservations:

QUOTE
It had been a relief, getting away like that, escaping to the woods with a gun. Her mom was a wreck. And the kids at school stared at her. She’d felt so alien. Lydia had been Chelsey’s home planet; without her sister, Chelsey was adrift. But often, Chelsey wondered if her father, if people in general, should spend less time protecting daughters and more time worrying about sons. The dangerous things boys do. How they might be raised differently. She’d mentioned something similar to her father once, and he’d gazed at her hard, then said even harder, <i>I don’t have any sons.</i>
END QUOTE

Now an adult, Chelsey feels duty-bound to help find and save girls who’ve vanished just like Lydia and Ellie did. At first she’s ecstatic that, unlike her own sister, Ellie has managed to come home alive. She soon suspects, however, that something isn’t quite right about the story Ellie is telling. As the days pass and the evidence mounts, Chelsey begins to believe that Ellie is keeping terrible, dangerous secrets, and that other girls are still at risk. Will Chelsey be able to get Ellie to talk about what really happened to her before anyone else gets hurt?

This was an excellent thriller that had me gasping in shock, both at the extremely clever plot twists and in sheer admiration of Ms Jean’s storytelling skill. Told from multiple viewpoints that shift back and forth in time, the layered construction of this book has been done with both exquisite delicacy and a keen eye for maximum drama. Perhaps most important, however, is the commitment to sisterhood and survival that permeates this sensitive exploration of what it means to be a victim in the 21st century, to always feel culpable in your own abuse and to have to fight to reclaim what should never have been taken from you in the first place. Despite the misgivings I had regarding some of Chelsey’s choices as a cop in the last third of the book, this was by far one of the best written and most affecting thrillers I’ve read this year so far.

Wow! Thank you so much Netgalley, Emiko Jean and Simon & Schuster for this ebook. This book was just so good one of the best detective books I've read. The way this story unfolded and how everything connected at the end was just superb. I couldn't put this down and I highly recommend!!!

Five star thriller!! I did not want to put this one down. I thought it was unique in a since as it does not remind me of any other mystery/thriller I’ve read in the past. I love the detective aspect of the book and the different POVs. There were also some twists and turns I DID NOT see coming, which is always a plus in thrillers. I would truly recommend this book to anyone. You won’t be disappointed. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars. The first thriller by this author, this book is expertly paced. And hold onto your seats, because the last 50ish pages have the twists and turns coming at you faster than you'll be able to turn the page. Told mostly from the detective's perspective, you will find interspersed throughout the novel short chapters from Ellie's perspective, and they are both fascinating and horrifying.

"It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.

But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return."

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

Recommended read! I could not put it down! Chelsey has lost her sister and now with children missing, she throws herself into trying to solve the mystery even at the results of almost losing her life and marriage. Lots of twists and hope. Missing girl, Ellie, wanders back and the case explodes!

I loved this book from the very first page. It was so engaging and kept my attention the entire time. We get flashbacks throughout the story that slowly tell us what really happened to Ellie and it left me on the edge of my seat. There were parts of her story that were hard to read.

The storyline was gripping and this was such a binge-worthy book! The twists blew my mind. I would have never guessed where the story was going and one shocking reveal in the end made my jaw drop. For a girl that has almost given up on thrillers, this one was great! Thank you so much for the gifted copy!

I could not put this book down. This isn't necessarily a fast-paced thriller, it was more of a character driven suspense novel but I could NOT STOP READING!

I have read Emiko Jean's YA novels in the past so it was exciting to see her veer into a new genre and she didn't disappoint.

This novel starts out with a bang - Ellie Black, who went missing two years ago, suddenly reappears. The small town detective, Chelsey, in charge of her case, who also has a personal connection to the case after her sister went missing years ago, is wondering what more there is to this story since Ellie isn't talking. She isn't saying what happened, who took her, how she got away, none of it. Chelsey thinks there is more to the story and slowly starts uncovering details as to what happened.

Emiko Jean did an amazing job keeping me incredibly invested in the characters - there were multiple narrators (I heard the audiobook is a full cast and is amazing!) and I thought she did a great job really developing each character and making me care so much about each person and kept me turning the pages because I just HAD to know what actually happened to Ellie.

There were a few big twists and turns - one that didn't quite work completely for me, but that didn't deter me from really loving this book. This is one I definitely will not forget and I can't wait to see what this author does next! Bravo!

Thank you to Netgalley & Simon and Schuster for this advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Ellie Black has made a miraculous return, after being missing for over two years. Coldwell cop Chelsey Calhoun is the detective assigned to Ellie's case. Detective Calhoun has been mired in a tragedy of her own for nearly 20 years, and Ellie's case brings everything to the surface for her. Something isn't quite adding up with Ellie's story about her captivity, though, and it will be up to Detective Calhoun to unravel the threads of deception to uncover the truth. Before it's too late for another girl.

It's incredible that this is the debut thriller by this author, because she set the hook perfectly. I was snared by this story and raced through the pages to get to Ellie's truth. There's a good pace and plenty of mind blowing revelations. Do yourself a favor and check out The Return of Ellie Black. Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

This is quite a captivating mystery that will keep you wanting to turn pages. It is full of exciting twists and turns until the very shocking end.

I really enjoyed this one!! I thought the mystery was really interesting and I never saw the plot twist at the end coming. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Chelsey & there were times when she got alittle annoying. There were a few small things at the end that I didn’t really care for, but overall, I enjoyed this one!

4.5 stars. This book was captivating from page one. I had to force myself to put it down to do things like work and sleep.

The characters are so strong, especially Ellie and Chelsey. The dual POV & timelines (Ellie’s experience running concurrently with Chelsey’s investigation) are so interesting. An amazing thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley, Emiko Jean, and Simon & Schuester for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.