The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld

When Lectus reviewed The Enchanted, I was intrigued. But, my library only had The Child Finder, which she also highly recommended, so I decided to borrow that.

The Child Finder is a unique take on the story of a missing child. It's told from two perspectives - the Child Finder, Naomi, and the Snow Girl, the missing child. Despite her intuitive style of investigating (she basically takes cues from the environment and the people and goes on hunches), Naomi has a very high success rate of finding missing children, something that makes sense given that she was one herself. Tasked to find Naomi, she starts investigating and finds herself drawn back into her past.

At the same time, the Snow Girl awakens in a cabin with no memory of herself. She lives with Mr. B, who can't read, can't write, and can't speak. Her side of the story is her journey through time and was pretty haunting.

That said, I found Snow Girl unconvincing at times, despite the cold and harsh nature of her story. I get that trauma can affect people differently, but Snow Girl is oddly mature in some aspects and lyrical that she didn't seem like a five year old (or eight year old) at all. If she was a little older (say ten or so), her thinking would have sounded more natural but her being five felt like it was pushing the bounds of believability.

Naomi's half of the story was interesting, although it wandered at times. I was expecting a deeper connection between Madison's disappearance and Naomi's past, which meant that I was somewhat disappointed when that wasn't the case. Yes, Naomi remembers something, but the two cases aren't linked and they don't really feel that similar. But, I did enjoy reading about Naomi and how she investigated so this isn't a huge gripe.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting story. The two halves of the story came together very well and despite some minor issues, I found myself enjoying it very much.