Lisa Scottoline (Look Again) clearly knows how to write a thrilling mystery: she's published nearly 20 of them in her long and successful career. In Come Home, however, she draws on her personal experience as a stepmother to write an intriguing tale about the lengths a mother will go to for a child to whom she has no blood relation. It's complicated, to say the least.
Come Home introduces us to Jill, a single mother and pediatrician with a preteen daughter. Through flashbacks we learn that her cad of an ex-husband not only stole from Jill, but abruptly ripped two stepdaughters out of her life when she caught him embezzling from her medical practice. Suspending, for a moment, the puzzle of what Jill ever saw in him, Scottoline makes us feel for the fact that despite Jill's best efforts, she lost not just her husband, but two children in the divorce. When Jill's shady ex-husband is found murdered, bringing her back in contact with the two young ladies she once thought of as her own, all hell breaks loose in a dangerous game to find the killer before he strikes again.
Scottoline has crafted a mystery set in a modern, blended family. She examines the bond an ex-stepparent has to children she can no longer rightfully call her own. The heart-wrenching family drama makes for an interesting backdrop to what could otherwise have been a run-of-the-mill whodunit. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend