Come Back For Me by Heidi Perks
Publisher: Randomhouse
Release date: 11 July 2019
Back cover blurb: A SHOCKING DISCOVERY. A COMMUNITY WRAPPED IN SECRETS. A tiny island community is stunned by the discovery of a long-buried body. For Stella Harvey the news is doubly shocking. The body has been found in the garden of her childhood home - the home her family fled without explanation twenty-five years ago. Now, questioning her past and desperate to unearth the truth, Stella returns to the isolated island. But she quickly finds that the community she left isn’t as welcoming as she remembers – and that people in it will go to any length to protect their secrets. One thing rings true… You can’t bury the truth forever ...
When Stella Harvey leaves the fictional Evergreen Island in the middle of the night with her family, she is distraught. She is young and doesn't understand why they must leave in the middle of a storm, and can't wait at least until the following day.
Twenty Five years later and Stella is watching the evening news disinterestedly when her eye is caught by something familiar ... her childhood home. A body has been discovered on Evergreen, a remote Island, 20 minutes from Poole Harbour on the Mainland, practically in her back garden.
Stella is drawn back to Evergreen and the community that she grew up in, though she cannot say why. She knows it is doubtful that she will have know the murder victim, for the Police are adamant that this is the crime committed, but she still feels a connection with the island she believes she will never lose.
Stella is not entirely welcomed back on to Evergreen as she might have believed that she would be. Locals she knew back when her family inhabited the Island seem keen not to engage with her for some reason, and she is largely treated as as outsider, which to Stella is devastating.
But still, as the murder happened almost literally on her old doorstep, Stella is determined to find out what happened, if she knew the victim, and if unthinkably this could be the reason that her family fled the Island all those years ago.
Come Back For Me ends rather quickly, and rather abruptly, but it does so in keeping with the story, and didn't seem rushed, though I was a little disappointed not to have a slightly more conclusive ending.
Come Back For Me is available from 11 July 2019
You can pre-order it now from Amazon online and all good book shops.
Thank You to the publisher who approved my request via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.