This is my symphony

Girl Last Seen (NetGalley)
Nina Laurin
Grand Central Publishing/Hatchett Group

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Unbecoming
Rebecca Scherm
Penguin

Two young women: Laine, a kidnap victim; and Julie, an accessory to a crime. Both are living under assumed names, supposedly for protection. Except, as both Girl Last Seen and Unbecoming demonstrate, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to run away from one’s past.

The stronger of the two novels is Unbecoming. Julie, nee Grace, is hiding out in France where she restores antiques at a small shop. She leads a quiet life and tries not to call attention to herself. It’s also a lonely life–because friendships would mean Grace would have to invent a past and keep track of her story. At the novel’s beginning, Grace gets word that her husband Riley and his best friend Alls are about to be paroled after spending three years in prison for a crime that she helped plan. What’s worse is the fact that Grace had planned her getaway with Alls … not her husband.

Grace met Riley when they were barely teens, and fell in love with his family. (And Riley, of course. Sort of.) The Grahams–especially Mrs. Graham–gave Grace a Leave it to Beaver family to belong to, one very different from her own. Mrs. Graham took on Grace as the daughter she never had, and Grace spent most of her days and nights with Riley’s family. The two secretly married the summer after Grace graduated high school, and Grace spent her life becoming what Riley needed her to be.

Grace studied art history at a prestigious art school in New York and had worked for an estate appraiser, so when a series of drunken hijinks left Riley owing money, they hatched the plan to rob the Wynne House, an estate in their hometown. Grace’s research leads her to discover that a small oil painting at Wynne House is rare and more than enough to get them out of trouble. They plan for Riley to reproduce the painting, after which they’d slip his copy in place of the original and escape to Europe. A fool proof plan, except for the fact that Grace and Alls spend forbidden night together, can’t deny their attraction any longer, and the two secretly arrange their escape.

But Grace ends up betraying both men, and now she has every reason to expect them to turn up on her doorstep, demanding … what, exactly? There’s no reason to spoil your reading of this suspenseful novel, but suffice it to say, Grace turns chameleon and becomes someone else again.

Nina Laurin’s Girl Last Seen is a novel that attempts to look at a girl on the milk carton after her rescue. And it’s not pretty. Laine, formerly Ella Santos, was held for nearly three years in a basement. Raped and tortured. Although Laine says, “Normal is something you can fake really well, if you try hard enough,” she isn’t doing a good job of it. Battling PTSD and anxiety, medicating herself with both legal and illegal prescriptions, and drinking to forget, Laine can barely hold on to her two jobs. Her shame runs deep, and her life is a mess. When ten-year-old Olivia Shaw disappears, now thirteen years after her own kidnapping, Laine finds herself drawn into the investigation.

Police suspect that the Laine’s kidnapper just might be the same man who abducted Olivia. The officer who rescued Laine ten years ago, detective Sean Ortiz, is working the Shaw case, convinced that this time the perpetrator will be caught with her help. Or could the Olivia’s kidnapper be Laine herself? Because Olivia Shaw is Laine’s daughter, conceived in rape, and taken away from her at birth. Trusting no one, Laine takes it upon herself to find Olivia and her search brings up demons in her past she had long sought to exorcise.

Sometimes the characters Laine and Sean seemed to lack authenticity–their responses and reactions to situations fell short of how I’d expect individuals to act. It got so that whenever Laine swallowed yet another pill or drank herself into a stupor again, I found myself more bored than concerned. But Girl Last Seen is a story of recovery (in more ways than one) and redemption, and in that sense, it’s a worthwhile read.