Where She Went

Written by Kelly Simmons

Narrated by Libby McKnight

What happens when your worst fear comes true? Her only daughter has just gone away to college, and Maggie O'Farrell knows she's turning into one of those helicopter parents she used to mock. Worrying constantly, texting more than she should, even occasionally dropping by the campus "just to say hi." But Maggie can't shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen to Emma. And then, just as Maggie starts to relax, her daughter disappears. The clues are disturbing. An empty dorm room where Emma was supposedly living. A mysterious boy described as Future Husband in her phone. Dormmates who seem more sinister than friendly. As Maggie combs over the campus looking for signs of her daughter, she learns more about Emma's life than she ever thought possible. Kelly Simmons delivers another gripping novel in Where She Went, an unforgettable story of letting go and the secrets that surface when the person keeping them is gone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980057734

Kelly Simmons

Kelly Simmons is a former journalist and advertising creative director specializing in marketing to women. She's the author of the critically acclaimed STANDING STILL and THE BIRD HOUSE.

Reviews for Where She Went

[marquis784-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Where She Went: A Novel by Kelly Simmons

October 1, 2019
Fiction,
Sourcebooks Landmark
Rating: 4/5
8/2/19-8/8/19
Rec’d 5/18/19

I received this digital arc from NetGalley and publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

Maggie O’Farrell owns a hair salon called Bubbles and Blowouts which helps pay the bills after her husband Frank died. He was a police lieutenant who was gunned down on the job. It never seemed clear what happened that day. Maggie’s main concern is her empty nest after her daughter, Emma leaves to attend Semper University. Although she tries to trust her daughter’s new found independence, she can’t help but worry about her. The daily calls begin to annoy and embarrass Emma whose roommates find ridiculous. The one comforting factor about Emma going to college was that her best friend Sarah would be there.

Just when Maggie starts to relax and focus on herself, there’s an increased in college campus crimes. Then, Maggie gets the call no mother wants to get...that her daughter is missing. Maggie will not let anyone stop her from finding her daughter including the police. She uses her intuition of years living with a police detective to track down the missing pieces of the story.

Unfortunately, Emma’s roommates are not very cooperative with their own secrets to hide. This is a page turner as the story flows back and forth between mother’s search for her daughter and her daughter’s search for justice. Amazing story which keeps your interest to the last page.

[kbranfield-837433 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Where She Went by Kelly Simmons is a suspenseful domestic mystery.

As soon as the police show up at her salon, Maggie O'Farrell knows something has happened to her eighteen year old daughter, Emma. Unfortunately, her intuition is not wrong and she is devastated to learn to Emma is apparently missing. Immediately demanding to be taken to her daughter's dorm room, Maggie notices quite a few things that just don't add up. She also feels like the detective assigned to the case is not pursuing the investigation vigorously enough so she takes matters into her own hands.

Despite feeling sympathetic for her situation, Maggie is a bit of an unlikeable character.  Her reaction to her daughter's disappearance is understandable but her behavior is over. the. top.  Maggie eventually receives help from a very surprising source, but will she and the police find her missing daughter?

While events in the present unfold, chapters from Emma's perspective detail what she was involved in during the months leading up to her disappearance. College life falls short of her expectations as she fails to make any real connections to her roommates or other students.  Interested in becoming a reporter for the university newspaper, Emma stumbles onto a story that could be explosive if she can nail down sources to back up her hypothesis.

Where She Went is a clever mystery with an intriguing storyline.  Of the two narrators, Emma is a much more interesting and likable character. Her struggles at university are realistic and relatable. Maggie's desperation to find her daughter is easy to relate to, but her behavior is exasperating and downright irritating. With the suspense building with every chapter, Kelly Simmons brings the novel to a somewhat abrupt and frustrating conclusion. A bit of a mixed bag but an overall enjoyable mystery with a topical storyline.

[susan0316 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A mother's worst nightmare is for her child to disappear. In this case, the child is an 18 year old girl who has recently started college. The story is tense and I thought it was a real page-turner. I was anxious to find out if the daughter would be found and where she'd been. There were lots of clues that lead you in the wrong direction which made the ending even more interesting.When Maggie's daughter Emma goes away to college, Maggie is very worried about her. In the last year, her husband (Emma's father) had been killed in the line of duty when he was with his partner who was also his mistress on police business. The novel is told by Maggie after Emma goes missing and by Emma before she went missing to show how she got from being a college student to where she ended up (can't tell you any more than that without spoiling it.) When Maggie finds out that Emma is missing, she goes into full scale mama bear mode. She wants answers and she wants them now. She tries to tell the police what to do and when they won't follow her suggestions, she does thinks on her own. The more she finds out about Emma's life at college, the more worried she gets. Even though they had been very close, Emma started keeping secrets from her mother when she went away to college which makes finding Emma even more difficult.This is a taut well written book about a missing child and about the changes that happen in a parental relationship between a mother and a daughter as they grow up. Overall it's a story about love and how far a mother will go to protect her child.Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

[alekee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was quickly looking for answers here, and trying to put myself in the shoes of a mother with her daughter missing, really unimaginable!This story did keep my attention, and I kept thinking the worse! It could have come for the pages of the daily news, it is similar to what has happened on a national level.The answers do come, and we walk in both the daughter’s and mother’s shoes, and hope for the best.Emma is one brave girl, spunky for a freshman, and trying to fit into life here, but she is going alone into a dark world.This quickly became a page turner as I looked for answers, and I so want the good to overcome evil!I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Sourcebooks Landmark, and was not required to give a positive review.