Carey and Janessa live in the woods — Nessa’s been there her entire young life but Carey’s had a taste of the outside world, way back in the day. Their mother brought them there to protect them, but mom is never around. She’s always out, looking for a way to feed the girls, for a way to keep them safe. 

If You Find Me begins when that all changes. Carey and Nessa are taken from their home in the woods by authorities, who introduce them to their biological father and inform them they’re going to be released into his custody. 

Mom was not coming back for them. 

Murdoch’s book follows Carey and Nessa’s reintroduction to the world — how do they adjust to living in a house again? With a family? With a new sister? Why did their mother take them away from civilization and into the woods? And maybe the most important question: what happened to those girls in the woods to make them who they are today? Because there’s something even darker going on. Because these girls are survivors in more than just one way. 

Surviving isn’t always pretty. 

The concept and storytelling were compelling; this was a plot unlike any other I’d read before. I was hooked and blew through the book in no time. However, I think that was where I found a number of problems with If You Find Me: it was too polished, too tidy, too easily resolved. I got through the book way too easily, as did the characters. Sure, they had their challenges, but they didn’t give me pause as a reader. 

I just accepted and went along and I’m not entirely sure I should have.  

Spoilers for the next few paragraphs, so skip down if you don’t want them. This book needed more depth and less back story info dumping, particularly in the final section where we get the entire history of Carey and Nessa. I starting finding the technique of weaving the back story into the narrative via Carey’s flashbacks distracting and unbelievable in the second section of the book, especially when we get a flashback where Carey’s been used by her mother to make a little cash by way of her body. Although I’d gotten the sense there was something off about Carey and something damaging to her, this came up a little too late for me to believe and pushed the story over the top. Even the final revelation — that a man had come to the trailer and raped Carey and attempted to rape Nessa before Carey shot and killed him — worked better for me than that. 

I also had a tough time buying Carey’s voice. Even though I could see something in her position being mature, the language didn’t work. There were multiple times a turn of phrase or an observation felt off. A girl raised in the woods, with no education beyond what she could ascertain in the world right around her, wouldn’t have the extensive vocabulary she did, not would she have the ease of social connection she did (and while it wasn’t always easy for Carey, it was almost as if she was undamaged from her life in many ways that should have been intensely damaging). Not to mention that Carey is 14. She’s not 17 or 18. She’s very young. Likewise, the writing itself came off as trying too hard at times, working in one too many forest-related metaphors in situations where it was unnecessary. It dragged down the pace in places where pacing didn’t need to be slowed. The author’s hand came through a bit too much for me — repeatedly reminding the reader, for example, how beautiful the girls were, how intelligent they were. It read as almost too protective of the characters. 

Subplots in the book were wrapped up too cleanly for me or were in and of themselves too convenient and contrived. I didn’t buy the tension between Carey and her new sister Delaney. I understood and sympathized with both of their situations; I could see why Delaney would feel like getting two new siblings after 15 years of being an only child would suck. However, the turnaround in their relationship was not satisfying or believable. I had trouble buying into the relationship between Ryan and Carey, too: how he figured out who she was so quickly and easily didn’t work for me. They were so young when Carey was kidnapped by her mother, so him recognizing the last name was a stretch. I wish there’d been more story about adjusting to life with not just a biological father the girls had been taken from, but also, I’d have liked more about adjusting to life with a stepmother. These points came off too easy. I will say, Melissa was one of my favorite adults in YA in a long time. She was patient, caring, and offered real bits of wisdom and hope for the girls that were such a stark contrast to everything they’d been used to. 

While I don’t believe all characters need to act in a certain way nor that they need to bear some sort of neurosis because of their past, I do think that there are times when more character development and less glossing over of important aspects are necessary. It’s possible the unique story here, in conjunction with the literary writing, allowed for some of the more questionable choices in the book to get through. There is something very ugly in this book — a number of very ugly things, in fact — but I never felt that ugliness, that quest and desire for survive and the fight necessary therein, ever quite came together. 

I also don’t need to mention that the romance was completely unnecessary. 

Despite the flaws, I enjoyed reading this book, and it reminded me a lot of Carol Lynch Williams’s Glimpse. I think this could have benefited from more, even: there were a lot of fascinating threads and a lot of subplots to explore, but they weren’t. I also felt that the ending of the book, where we finally learned the whole of what made Carey (and Nessa) who they were, left enough for real further exploration, too.  If You Find Me is imperfect, but it’s enjoyable enough because of the fresh plot. 

If You Find Me will be available March 26 from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher.