This is the ninth book in a series featuring D D Warren, who is a homicide detective in Boston. This particular book also has the character of Flora Dane, who has appeared in this series before. Now I have not read any of the other books in this series and I did not think that impacted on my enjoyment or understanding of this book.
In this book, the massacre of a family is the case that Warren has to solve. The eldest daughter was not in the house when the murders took place and the police have to decide whether Roxanna Baez is a victim or a suspect. Added to Warren's problems is Flora Dane, who has been talking to Roxy online and is inserting herself into the investigation.
I enjoyed this book, a lot. So much so it has inspired me to read the other books in this series. I liked the writing, and liked the depth that the author put into the characters in this book. I really liked the fact that the three main characters were women, strong but very human women, who had come through some dark times and were moving forward with their lives.
One thing that I was moved to tears by was Roxy's storyline, and in particular her essays on family. I thought that this was really well done.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this book.

It’s always my favourite time of the bookish year when Lisa Gardner had a new book out. I’ve been a fan for many years now and have read every book she has written and there have been A LOT of them! Look For Me had a great spin for me though as not only was it the next book in the D.D. Warren series, it was also a “buddy up” for her as Flora Dane was back to also help solve the case alongside her. If you haven’t read Find Her, the first read to feature Flora Dane, then you may want to put this one on hold until you do. There aren’t spoilers as such but you will definitely understand Flora more if you follow her story from the start.

There are two crime scenes described here and both were shocking in very different ways. The opening scenes where we meet Sarah were unexpectedly violent as an unspeakably horrific crime took place. But then following quickly on its tail was another mass murder spree but the description of this one broke my heart. To see an entire family wiped out with one member missing, there can only be two options-that 16 year old Roxanna Baez was involved or that she is now on the run for her life from whoever did murder her family. It is up to DD to decide which it is but this case may not be as cut and dried as it looks which is where “famous” survivor Flora Dane comes in. Her unique outlook and dogged determination are just the right qualities needed to search for clues in places the police may not have access to. And it was a brilliant idea to reintroduce Flora again to this thriller to get a different perspective on the motive for this sickening crime as, let’s admit it, no one understands victims like a survivor.

Lisa Gardner brings an uncomfortable realism to her series as she deals with family relationships, the fostering system and the difficulties of those teenage years having to “fit in”. It is always interesting to see how DDs priorities have changed since meeting Jack and becoming a mum and, although her job always has to come first, she has the perfect partner to have by her side to help her look at things from a different perspective. I’ve always enjoyed her personal development as much as the case she is called upon to solve.

A great addition to the series and I’m looking forward to the next.

I will fear no evil. Flora Dane is back and she has gotten herself involved in looking for a young girl that the only survivor to her family's murder but is she a victim or the killer? Can Flora with the help of her new friend Sarah find her before the police do as they fear that Roxanna will be pay for a crime that she didn't commit? They are hoping that she will be able to point them in the right direction as the more the police dig the worse things seem. But Flora is about to get a chance at finding Roxy with the help of the police, she has her own methods of finding the truth but this time she has the backing of the police kind of. D.D knows that Flora will stay involved so it is best to have her on their side. But this case is about to get even more complicated as the family history isn't the greatest but who would have killed the whole family & only left Roxy alive? The children never had the best upbringing as their mother was a drunk and they were taken away and the girls suffered badly in foster care. Did they that have something to do with the murders or was it the teenager gang that had enough of the younger sister or was it the mean girl from the foster home? There are so many suspects but who did it and where is Roxy? They need to find her before it is too late. Can Flora find all the missing pieces and help the police solve the murders? I never saw the killer coming and that's what makes the book so interesting many layers. We all know that Flora doesn't give up it is her mission in life now to save the victims and give them back their lives. And we know that D.D is a good cop that just wants to get a dog for the family and to find the young girl before it is too late for her. A good solid read. I was lucky enough to receive a copy in exchange for my honest review via Netgalley & the publishing house.

This story captivated me early on. I found myself making guesses throughout. Going back and forth on whether Roxy was involved in the murders or not. In the end I was still incorrect.
This definitely helped with my reading slump. Thankfully.

This was a real page turner, with enough twists and turns to keep you hooked till the last page. I hadn’t read any of the previous books in the series, but it didn’t matter - this works well as a stand alone. There were times when it was clear that the main characters have been developed over the course of several other books, but it didn’t stop this book being enjoyable. Look For Me focuses on a tragic shooting where four members of a family are murdered and then fifth, teenager Roxana, has apparently gone on the run. Detective D.D. Warren begins the investigation, initially hampered but ultimately helped by vigilante and past crime survivor Flora Dane. The dynamic between these two women is enjoyable and entertaining, and it’s great to read a book so packed full of strong female characters. Elements of the story felt a little far fetched to me at times, but I think that’s possibly because it’s so fast paced that the author doesn’t always have the time to go into great depth explaining characters and particular situations. Overall though, this was a compulsive and enjoyable read that kept me guessing.

Lisa Gardner at her best. A simply amazing read. A story based upon children being taken from a drunken mother and put into a home until the mother can prove she has changed. The foster home descriptions are so thought provoking and made me wonder if there was any good foster parents. When the family is finally reunited the deeper part of the story begins. A truly psychological thriller that is sensationally gripping and for once I had no idea who was responsible.

I can't believe Look For Me is book nine in the DD Warren series from Lisa Gardner, I'm a huge fan of this series, and have followed It from the very beginning. When I get to this point in a long running series I can't help but wonder if the authors going to run out of steam, it must be difficult to come up with new ideas for plots and characters after writing so many books, but any worries I may have had were unfounded, if anything Look For Me is a reminder why Lisa Gardiner is a bestselling crime novelist.

I should mention Look For Me can be read as a standalone, despite it featuring young victim turned vigilante Flora Dane who we met in “Find Her”. As I've come to expect from this author Look For Me opens with a grim and disturbing prologue that grabs your attention and leaves you desperate to read on. Detective DD Warren is called in to find the predator who massacred Roxy’s family. Curiously, Roxy and the two family dogs have gone missing. Is Roxy running because she’s guilty of murdering her family? Or is she terrified she’ll be the final victim? Detective D. D. Warren leads the investigation alongside Flora Dane survivor-turned-avenger.

I've said this before I do love American crime thrillers they always feel that little bit darker and a lot more gritty, that said there are some scenes in Look For Me which some readers may find distressing due to the subject matter. As you can imagine nine books there aren't any real surprises regarding DD Warren’s character, but it was interesting concept to add Flora into the investigation, a vigilante with a band of “survivor” helpers, could this possibly the start of a new series? I'm hoping so. Surprisingly Look For Me is more than just a crime thriller, it’s also a heart wrenching novel about the foster care system, and a family torn apart. Sometimes grim but unfortunately very credible Lisa Gardner has written another gripping and worthy addition to the The DD Warren series.
Review maybe altered slightly and edited prior to publication on my blog

I absolutely love the relationship between Flora Dane and DD Warren, it is such a budding friendship, and the similarities between them are so obvious although neither of them see it. Fantastic dynamics between the main characters, well written and totally absorbing! Read it!

I’m grateful to Netgalley for an arc of this book in return for an honest review. Having been aware of Lisa Gardener and knowing she was highly regarded but never read any of her work I decided that this was a good opportunity. I was expecting an American detective novel. This wasn’t quite what one got. Half police investigation, half a study of a dysfunctional family falling apart.. This book worked very well as a stand alone story but several times I wished that I had some prior knowledge of three or four of the main characters who had obviously featured in previous books, particularly the main female police protagonist D D Warren. Flora Dane is a survivor of an abduction and attack that lasted over a year and she has now learnt to get her life back in her own fashion. Part of that is helping other female trauma survivors. In this capacity she ends up assisting D D in a semi official capacity. I’m not sure this worked for me. It didn’t seem very credible.

The book opened with disjointed strands of different stories which I assumed would come together. The reader is required to switch between them which’s confusing. I found myself becoming emotionally involved in one tale and them having to shift to a completely different scenario that this writers skill draws you into yet again. I also had difficulty with the swapping of tenses in the narration. D D is dealt with in the third person whilst Flora narrates her own action in the first person. Sometimes confusing. And running through the book are occasional chapters of a lengthy school essay on the perfect family written by one of the victims, Roxy. Given this characters background and schooling it seems too well written to be credible.

But it’s obvious that Lisa Gardener has done a lot of research into her subject matter and has become deeply affected by the plight of children and young people in Massachusetts. She tells us that there has been a nearly 30% jump in recent years of children removed from their homes and there are now over 9,000 children in the state who need foster care, but there are not enough families for them. With the author, we can’t fail to be moved by such statistics. This book seems to be partly an attempt to highlight their plight, which is laudable. There is the basis of a good story here by an author who obviously cares about the plight of the neglected children of Boston, but for me she hasn’t quite pulled it off I said, not quite the book I was expecting. Would I read any more by this author ? Probably not but I wouldn’t totally rule it out.

I struggled to like this book. I read it fairly quickly as it isn't very long.

This is a story about survivors. It starts by recounting the tale of a girl, Sarah, who was the sole survivor of an attack on her room mates at college. She meets up with a fellow survivor, Flora, who acts as her mentor teaching her how to live again. In a separate incident the police are investigating the murder of a whole family - with the exception of one of the daughters and the two dogs. The police have no clues as to who might be responsible...or even where the missing girl is. Soon Sarah and Flora are helping the police to track down the missing girl and also to try and crack the murder case....and this is where I had problems.

I don't believe that the police would allow two people who are not in the police, and have no specialist training to be as involved as these two girls are. Flora in particular is very annoying, she has an annoying was of speaking and if I have to hear about Mace being illegal is Massachusetts one more time I swear I will scream - this piece of information is repeated A LOT! The other really annoying this is that both the police and Flora go and interview different people and find out the same or similar information - this gets tedious as we are repeatedly told the same thing over and over again, and then just for good measure we hear it again when they meet up to exchange notes.

The end is predictable - I cracked who the killer was mid way through the book so it was just a case of waiting for the penny to drop in the book. All in all, if this is a true reflection of law enforcement and the foster care system in Massachusetts then it's somewhere that I won't be moving anytime soon.

This honest review was given in exchange for a preview copy of the story from Netgalley

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I’ve always loved Lisa Gardner books and particularly her DD Warren series. This book was enjoyable and a good read but I don’t think it was quite up to par with the previous books in the series. Took me a while to get through it. Nevertheless I’ll still be looking out for the next in the series and will definitely be reading more.

This is the first book I’ve read by Lisa Gardner and it did not disappoint. I am always concerned reading a book that is part of a detective series as a stand alone as sometimes it can take half the book to get a feel of the character. At no point did I feel this way with DD but was hooked from page one. Captivating story that I could not second guess where the next chapter was going to take me. I feel the relationship between Flora and DD was enthralling and cannot wait to see where it goes from here. Definite on the edge of your seat thriller from page one.

A dysfunctional family laid bare. The book looks at the effect this can have on the children and how their choices have an impact on their future.
This also looks at girl gangs. Some of the content is distressing as at the start we see most of the family murdered and look back at events from the surviving members perspective.
There is a strong message about survivors of traumatic events, namely women, running through the book.
I quite enjoyed the overall story but the girl gang involvement was not for me.

This was a mixed bag for me. The opening chapter was great, and then that storyline isn't continued at all so I was left wondering why it had even been included, other than to grab a reader quickly before switching out a new story entirely.

A lot of the emphasis in this book is the twists and turns and the whodunit factor, which is fine and I didn't guess the killer, but also felt a bit meandering at times. There was also a vigilante character whose internal monologue I found to be quite dull and which seems to make up a good chunk of the book.

Action packed book which kept me turning the pages to find out what happens. Emotive and heart breaking. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book.

A new author for me. She has written quite a few novels and is well respected. A family in Boston Mass. are murdered - shot. The mother, her partner, her teenage daughter and her young son. The only survivor the elder girl sixteen year old Roxanna, who took their two blind dogs for a walk and is missing. Detective Sergeant D.D. Warren and her team investigate. They are helped and hindered by Flora Dane and her team of survivors. Flora was kidnapped and held for over a year by a rapist and murderer, before she killed him. An exciting mystery which keeps you guessing. My only query is why Warren did not have someone to report to - she seemed to be in total control! A good read, recommended. I will seek out more from this author. .

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher and the Author. I have liked everything this author has written, love D D Warren and this book was brilliant.

This was my first book in the DD Warren series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I shall be looking to read more. I particularly liked the relationship between Warren and Flora Dane. I found Flora to be an interesting and unusual character. It was the inter-relationships between the characters that made this book so enjoyable. The plot is centred around a brutal family murder and the story takes us back and forward into the lives of the characters. It does not get 5 stars from me because it does not have that extra special something. It is however a very good read and I would not hesitate to recommend it.

Fiction - Crime

Score: 9/10


Absolutely heartbreaking....... All I can say right now, after just finishing the final page of this gut wrenching novel is, thank God I never had to live in foster care. That is all.

Have read Lisa’s books in the past and really enjoy them. This was no different. Great suspense quick and easy to read. Loved it