Andrea reviews FIND HER by Lisa Gardner (Dutton, 2016)
When a good-looking woman lets loose in a bar on a Friday evening, nobody thinks twice about it. The woman knows she’s attractive and has enough self-confidence to buy herself the first overpriced fruity drink, but she also knows she can count on a stranger to buy her more drinks. Somebody always does and tonight is no exception.
When the same girl is assaulted in the parking lot for being a drunken tease, only the bartender comes to her rescue. When she wakes up naked in the bartender’s garage with her hands zip tied in front of her, she has to think fast.
All she tells the bartender when he comes down is, “You don’t know who I am.”
Turns out Devon, the bartender, did not know he had abducted Florence (Flora) Dane, the woman who was held captive in a pine box for 472 days and survived. Now Flora is on a mission to save other women who have been abducted.
Using herself as bait, she lures men into taking her captive. When the men comply, she uses every bit of survival skills she learned from being abducted, tortured, beaten, and raped for so long, and she is able to kill or maim each man after she tells them, “You don’t know who I am.” By claiming “self-defense” she has gotten away with these actions four times already.
Is Flora a victim, a survivor, or is she just plain reckless? Readers will either sympathize with her or they will believe she is a heartless killer. It’s up to you to decide.
Andrea Bledsoe-King, Cordova Library