Dear Child: A Novel

by Romy Hausmann

Overview

NOW A #1 NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES AND #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

“[A] tantalizingly disturbing debut…As enthralling as it is thought-provoking.” -New York Times Book Review

BookPage’s Top 10 Mystery & Suspense of the Year

Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2020

New York Times Group Text Pick

A woman held captive finally escapes—but can she ever really get away?

Gone Girl meets Room in this page-turning, #1 internationally bestselling thriller.

A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.

She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior. She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn’t their Lena.

The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn’t sharing, and Lena’s devastated father is trying to piece together details that don’t quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him…and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges.

Twisty, suspenseful, and psychologically clever, Romy Hausmann's Dear Child is a captivating thriller with all the ingredients of a breakout hit.

“Chilling, original and mesmerizing.” —David Baldacci

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250768551
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	08/24/2021
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	222,751
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Romy Hausmann lives with her family at a remote house in the woods in Stuttgart, Germany. Dear Child is her English-language debut.

Editorial Reviews

“Equal parts mystery, thriller and family story…[A] tantalizingly disturbing debut…the overall experience is as enthralling as it is thought-provoking. Hausmann creates a dark solar system studded with twinkling stars… At the core of Dear Child is the constant hope that characters will be drawn back to people who mean the most to them, no matter how far apart they’ve been pulled. That glint of optimism is the light guiding readers as they fly through this book.” —New York Times

“A nightmarish and high-tension Gone-Girl-meets-Room thriller.” —Parade

"Perfect for fans of Room and The Water Cure." —Bustle, Best Books of Fall 2020

“This chilling, clever mystery begins where most suspense stories end: with the escape…Deliciously creepy…deftly crafted and keeps you guessing until the very last page.” —Real Simple

“Dear Child is a chilling, original and mesmerizing work. Hausmann is a force to be reckoned with. You can’t stop reading.”

—David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Memory Man

“If you only read one thriller this year, choose this one. Room meets Gone Girl in this gripping novel, which will haunt you long after the last page. Deliciously dark, original, and beautifully written, I loved this book.”

—Alice Feeney, New York Times bestselling author of Sometimes I Lie

“There are so many twists – all of them shocking…As unsettling as they come, this outstanding debut...is recommended not only to [Room] fans, but also to those who enjoy true crime, as the verisimilitude here is second to none. The movie can't be far behind.”

—Booklist, starred review

“Outstanding debut…The multiple points of view and numerous plot twists sustain the breakneck pacing, but the books’ real power lies in the author’s insightful and sensitive portrayal of the characters involved in the tragedy. This darkly disturbing thriller definitely marks Hausmann as a writer to watch.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“I didn’t even try to figure out whodunit. I just kept turning pages, wondering what the hell was going to happen until I had finished the book in one sitting, in the small-numbered hours of the late night.”

—BookPage, starred review

“Dear Child is one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year. I finished it in one sitting. It’s flawlessly plotted with a pace that refuses to let the reader come up for air—not that you’d want to.”

—Stephanie Wrobel, bestselling author of Darling Rose Gold

“I read Dear Child in one sitting, holding my breath! Such a gripping, suspenseful and beautifully written novel. I loved it!”

—Jo Spain, author of The Confession

“An accomplished thriller, beautifully written, intriguing and very compelling.”

—Peter James, #1 international bestselling author of Find Them Dead

"A peerless exercise in suspense . . . Whether treated as a study in trauma and identity or a dark, well-crafted crime narrative from multiple perspectives, it is a nail-biting fare," —Financial Times

"Terrifying and fiercely compelling, this is heartbreaking" —Daily Mail

"Hausmann makes you care about her characters even while they keep you guessing’"—Sunday Express

"Told from multiple viewpoints which gives a satisfying complexity . . . An intelligent and original book" —Sunday Independent

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2020

DEBUT For 4,993 days and nights, Matthias Beck waits for the call revealing the whereabouts of his daughter Lena, dead or alive. A victim of a hit-and-run accident, bearing a distinctive scar, seems certain to be the young woman who disappeared 13 years ago in Munich. Heartbroken Matthias knows disappointment again when it is not his daughter—until the appearance of a young girl, the victim's daughter, Hannah, who looks exactly like his Lena as a child. Three traumatized narrators, each a liar, tell their stories, but it is eerily intelligent Hannah who reveals their disturbing existence in an isolated windowless cabin where Papa controls them to an agonizing degree. Lena sleeps chained to a bed, using the bathroom at appointed times, and all must employ impeccable manners, for they are the perfect family now, despite the abuse. When Lena seizes her chance to escape, the trauma is not over. VERDICT Hausmann's English-language debut is absorbing and sinister, with a tightening web of psychological intrigue. Tiny clues are steadily inserted into this fast-paced, shivery tale with an unforeseen denouement. Inevitably likened to Emma Donoghue's Room, also suggest Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes.—Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL

Library Journal

Abduction and captivity are explored in this engrossing thriller, which begins with an escape. Lena has been missing for 14 years when a woman fitting her description emerges from the woods claiming to be she—but is not. The malnourished 13-year-old with her, who calls her Mama, is not her child. Jane Collingwood voices the woman, conjuring her terror at being locked in the cabin in her nightmares and capturing her struggles with freedom when awake. Nicky Diss’s lofty tone and childish timbre eerily evoke Hannah, who must believe wholeheartedly in the strict order of her bizarre upbringing to be able to cope in an unknowable new world. Simon Slater portrays Lena's father, Matthias, who is full of rage and grief as he continues to search for his daughter. S.T.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

A woman stumbles into the road one night and is struck by a car. Is she really Lena Beck, who disappeared more than a dozen years ago? Jane Collingwood, Nicky Diss, and Simon Slater narrate as three parts of a fractured triangle brought together by a terrifying abduction. Slater embodies gruff Matthias, a grieving father whose search for his daughter has driven him to the brink. Collingwood’s young Hannah seems remarkably well adjusted for an adolescent recluse, but her secret depths are subtly hinted at through tone and other vocal cues. As the possible Lena, Diss expertly portrays a woman nearly shattered by her experiences and uncertain of how to pick up the pieces. Despite some minor editing flaws, this mind-bending thriller is sure to enthrall listeners. N.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

A woman stumbles into the road one night and is struck by a car. Is she really Lena Beck, who disappeared more than a dozen years ago? Jane Collingwood, Nicky Diss, and Simon Slater narrate as three parts of a fractured triangle brought together by a terrifying abduction. Slater embodies gruff Matthias, a grieving father whose search for his daughter has driven him to the brink. Collingwood’s young Hannah seems remarkably well adjusted for an adolescent recluse, but her secret depths are subtly hinted at through tone and other vocal cues. As the possible Lena, Diss expertly portrays a woman nearly shattered by her experiences and uncertain of how to pick up the pieces. Despite some minor editing flaws, this mind-bending thriller is sure to enthrall listeners. N.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2020 - AudioFile

2020-06-17
A father’s quest for his kidnapped daughter, gone 13 years, may finally have borne fruit.

Hausmann’s debut, translated from the German, revolves around a young woman who has been held captive in a windowless forest cabin on the border between Bavaria and the Czech Republic. As the story opens, she has escaped, one of her two children in tow, only to be hit by a car on the road just outside the woods. She’s in intensive care, unable to explain much of anything; her daughter, Hannah, though extremely intelligent, has developmental issues that make her unhelpful to investigators as well. Once it’s determined that the injured woman’s name is Lena, the police are able to connect her with a 13-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a college student in Munich. The round-robin narration switches among Lena, Hannah, and Lena’s father, Matthias Beck. Matthias has been counting and cursing the days—4,825 of them—since his daughter went missing. Now, at last, he gets the call he’s been waiting for, and he and his wife accompany the police investigator, a close family friend, to the hospital—only to find out the woman in the bed is not their Lena. But wait—there’s a little girl in the hallway who is their daughter’s spitting image. Hausmann’s novel has been billed as Room meets Gone Girl for its combination of mother and kids locked up in a hidey-hole with dueling, often dissimulating, unreliable narrators. But both of those blockbuster antecedents are strongly character-driven. Here, possibly in the interest of withholding information, the author has failed to make the central characters seem like real people, and the supporting ones are barely outlined. For this reason, the reveals in the latter part of the book are less exciting than they should be.

The plot is sufficiently creepy and twisty, but without well-developed characters, the reader's buy-in will be limited.

Kirkus Reviews