HER PERFECT LIFE

A successful TV journalist and doting mom fights threats from the past and in the present in this fleet mystery.

Lily Atwood seems to have it all—a thriving career as a crusading TV reporter, a throng of Emmys, a darling little daughter, and an adoring fan base that has dubbed her #PerfectLily. But Lily has secrets, the most haunting among them the disappearance of her sister when Cassie was a college freshman and Lily just 7 years old. Cassie vanished in the aftermath of a fire on her college campus that injured one of her professors and might have resulted in another student’s death. After an intensive search, law enforcement interest in Cassie dwindled, but Lily never believed her sister was dead. Despite her reporting skills, she hasn’t been able to find a trace of Cassie—until an anonymous source who’s given her several legitimate tips about unrelated stories drops a bomb. The source claims he (or she; Lily isn’t sure about the voice) knows Cassie is alive and where to find her. Lily’s producer, a workaholic woman named Greer Whitfield, is soon in on the secret thanks to Walt Banning, a detective who seems to know a lot about the cold case. Lily is torn between wanting to find her sister and wanting to protect her own flawless public persona—if Cassie has stayed in hiding for so long, perhaps there’s a very unpleasant reason. Lily is also reflexively protective of Rowen, her 7-year-old daughter and the center of her life. And there’s another secret connected to Rowen—the girl has never met her father, and Lily wants to keep it that way. Ryan deftly switches points of view among Lily, Greer, and, in chapters set just before her disappearance, Cassie, keeping the reader guessing about characters’ identities and different versions of events as the tension mounts.

A well-crafted plot and strong female characters drive a satisfying psychological thriller.