Every Moment Since by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

 

My thoughts

A story that will break your heart. A story that will make you weep. But in it's way it also gives you some hope. Hope that lives can be built back. Families can move on. People can find some kind of closure.

Do not read this book if you know anyone who has had a child go missing. Or even have lost a child to violence. It's a sad one. It will bring on the tears.

A man writes a best selling novel. It's about his life. His life after a loss that he blames himself for. Thaddeus was only fifteen years old when his eleven year old brother went missing. His parents had made him take Davy with him to play games in the dark with friends. But TJ, as he was know, made his little brother go away and leave him alone. He wanted to drink beer for the first time. He wanted to be with his friends and enjoy the time he had to be out. Little did he know that would be the night his life changed forever. The night his brother would go missing. The night his mother would, in her way, blame him. He was just a fifteen your old child. 

This book takes you inside a family's loss. A family's destruction. A story that will stay with you for a while. For a good long while. It's so well written that you can feel the air. The anger. The sadness. You can feel the effects that this missing child has on the whole town. The man who was accused's feelings. How he had to live with the things said about him and to him. How one night can change lives.

This book was a very dark one. It was so sad and so filled with loss. When Davy's jacket is found they know that it won't be long before his body is found also. It's been twenty-0ne years. Any hope that he is alive is gone. Who could have done this. Who would have done this. I have to admit that I suspected the who from early one. I didn't know or have any idea how though and it didn't take away from this story in any way. The last parts made me weep big tears. The grief of this family was told in such a realistic way. Then the way they will finally move on. Possibly rebuild theirs lives. Together.

Thank you #NetGalley, #HarperMuse, for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

Five big stars.

About

A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.

Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, "All at the very same time!" Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago.

When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy's family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single Thaddeus Malcor, Davy's older brother, created the life of his dreams by writing a bestselling memoir about his family's experience and is enjoying success and notoriety as a result, even if the memoir doesn't quite reveal the whole story. Tabitha Malcor, his mother, is divorced and living alone, advocating for victims' rights and faithfully cataloging her regrets each week, never including her biggest regret of all. Anissa Weaver was just a kid herself when Davy went missing, and her connection to him is one she cannot reveal as she serves as the Malcor family's Public Information Officer. And, long suspected in Davy's disappearance, Gordon Swift has kept his head down and scraped together a decent life. But the new attention to the case makes it impossible to hide from the public, and the past.

With hauntingly vivid prose, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen peels back the curtain on the inner turmoil of those who were left behind in the small Southern community as they pick up the pieces that remain and press forward into the light to find hope and healing.