(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

After a massacre at a Bosnian prison camp, a young girl is found alone, clutching a diary, so traumatized she can’t even speak. Twenty years later, the last witness to the prison guards' brutal crimes must hunt down those responsible to learn what happened to her family.
Twenty years ago, after the fall of Yugoslavia, the world watched in horror as tens of thousands were killed or imprisioned in work camps during an “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. Carla Lane has little knowledge of what went on halfway around the world when she was a child. She is living a near perfect life in New York City, married and soon to have a family of her own. But when her husband is murdered by a group of Serbian war criminals, strange memories start coming back, and she discovers that she underwent extensive therapy as a girl to suppress her memories. She is given her mother’s diary, which unlocks her childhood memories and reveals that she was, along with her parents and young brother, imprisoned in a war camp outside Sarajevo.
As her memories come back, it becomes clear that she is the last witness to a brutal massacre in the prison and that her brother may still be alive. She sets out to find her brother, but first she must hunt down the war criminals responsible for destroying her life. But these killers will stop at nothing to protect their anonymity and their deadly pasts...and are determined to silence the last witness to their crimes.

I have been a fan of Glenn Meade's since reading Brandenburg a number of years ago. Since then, I have read other novels by him, with a varying degree of appreciation.

The weird thing about this book is that it feels like it was written by two separate people. The first half of the book - in which the MC describes the horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. That story was incredibly captivating and horrifying. I was wrapped up in that story for the first half of the book. The settings, the descriptions, the horrors...all sensational...

And then the second half started...and the ability to suspend disbelief was just a bit too much for me. Also, the characters went from being things of flesh and bone in the first half, to being cardboard cutouts in the second. Even the bad guys were just a stitched together version of every action/thriller bad guy you have ever read. And that is a shame.

Would I recommend it? Probably, there is enough good stuff in this book to warrant a read...but probably not a second one.


Paul
ARH