Finding Jake

"Shots have been fired at the high school. Calmly report to St. Michael's across Route 5."

These are the word no parent ever wants to hear. Yet those are precisely the words that appeared as a text message on Simon Connolly's phone. Part of your mind wants to believe it's a joke, but deep down inside you know it's not. These are the things that happen in bad neighborhoods, not in the city the Connolly's live in. In fact, it is because of the excellent schools in the area that forced the Connolly's to make a move from the city to one outside the city. Where neighbors look out for one another, but today is not that day.

As Simon Connolly races to St. Michael's he is worried for his two children that attend that school, Jake and Laney. All kinds of thoughts run through your mind when you get a message like that and all you want to do is anything to protect your kids. They know that 13 students are dead and that the shooter apparently killed himself. One by one, parents wonder if they will be called to get their child and go home relieved, or will they face a parents greatest fear, that your child is one of the victims. All Simon knows is that he will do everything he can to find his children to make sure they are safe.

In the compelling novel Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon, it takes the readers into the real fear every parent has, that one day, their child might find themselves in this situation. While I don't want to give away the main part of this novel, it does give readers an inside look I had never considered before. How parents who are captivated by their own grief can target the parents of the shooter as if there was anything that could have been done to prevent this. You see how they are very much the victim and yet also on trial from the media, family and friends, and complete strangers who will threaten them in ways that are often times criminal. As a parent, I could relate to seeing things from both sides of the fence but more significantly it made me realize how we as a society can ostracize people who truly don't deserve it in trying to understand the why's of what happened.

I received Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon compliments of William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins Publishers for my honest review. I did not receive any monetary compensation for a favorable review and the opinions are strictly my own. While I can understand this novel might not be something everyone wants to read, I applaud the author for taking us behind the scenes to what is often lacking in the news, to see things from different perspectives and make you understand in a safe manner, that things like this happen. It is what we will do when it does, that makes us who we are! For me, this one rates a 5 out of 5 stars simply because it took me someplace I never expected to be, and that is seeing things from different perspectives and hoping it changed me for the better in regards to stereotyping people based on their looks or actions. We seriously don't know who people are until we are willing to look much deeper. 

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Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon

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To read more reviews on Finding Jake, please visit William Morrow's website.