I am definitely losing it. I received a copy of Joe Hart’s latest, Never Come Back, from Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I loved it, so I looked for more by him. Turns out Never Come Back is book #2 in the “Nora McTavish series” so I went back and read #1 in the series, Where They Lie. I loved it, and it clarified things about Nora, the protagonist…then today I went to my blog and searched for Joe Hart, and I had not only READ book #1, I had reviewed it in 2022. (No wonder it seemed familiar to me!)
When Never Come Back opens, Nora McTavish is self-employed as a family advocate who worked for quite some time (including in book #1 in the series) for Child Protective Services. As a former foster mom to a teenage girl, I have had more than my share of working with CPS, and I found both books to resonate with me. In book #1, Nora’s frustrations with the system are evident: “Someone once said we don’t have a. justice system, we have a legal system.” Nora tries to keep her emotions in check and to keep her personal and professional lives separate, but it is clearly a struggle, so it makes perfect sense for her to be settling into her new profession at the start of book #2. She gets a phone call out of the blue from her childhood friend Tess, whom she has neither seen nor heard from in years, since Tess was there when Nora went into foster care herself after horrific abuse and neglect.
“We forget how young some people are when they start carrying weight beyond their years, then wonder why they struggle”… but Nora gets it as a result of her own childhood experiences. “Being a child of abuse was a little like trying to outrun a storm.” Tess has called asking for Nora’s help in her custody battle with her ex-husband Neil, who is a professor at the local university. Rumors have it that Neil was having an affair with one of his students, who was found murdered. Charges were dismissed, but Tess is trying to keep Neil away from their young daughter. As Nora works to unravel the situation, things from her own past (some of which Tess knows about better than almost anyone) start to emerge. Then another murder REALLY starts things moving in ways that make for a great story.
I really enjoyed both books in this series, and have started to read other books by this author. I hope we will see more of Nora McTavish – I have found over the years that it takes a real gift for a male author to write well from a female POV, but Mr. Hart does this better than most. Five stars. Highly recommended.