Elizabeth Hampton is still in the process of figuring out her life. She has a plan that she's following pretty much to the letter and is rather satisfied with how things are progressing. The thing that Elizabeth doesn't foresee is that someone would murder her mother, leaving her with the responsibility of caring for her adult brother, Ronnie, who has Down's syndrome. Worse yet, the police believe that Ronnie is the one who killed their mother.

Elizabeth knows that this cannot possibly be true and she sets about to prove that Ronnie did not strangle their mother to death. What she does discover in the process is much worse than she could ever have imagined, however. Opening up the Pandora's Box of secrets that seem to suddenly abound in her family also puts Elizabeth in a kind of danger that she never would have thought she would face.

I discovered author David Bell through reading Cemetery Girl, another of his books. He instantly became one of my new favorite writers so I was excited to read NEVER COME BACK. I wasn't disappointed. He had me hooked from the very first page and then carried me right along with Elizabeth as she conducted her own investigation into who had killed her mother. There's a feeling of being right there in the middle of things that I loved.

David Bell creates an atmosphere of suspense while showing that families aren't perfect. For example, Elizabeth loves her brother but she had never wanted to be responsible for his care because she had her own life to live. That doesn't make her a bad person; just an honest one. It turns out that there's plenty of honesty to go around as the book progresses.

While NEVER COME BACK offers a great deal of suspense and made me anticipate each new page, it carries a lot of realism as well. Many readers may find parts of themselves in the characters depicted and will easily relate with Elizabeth's dilemma as well as her quest to find answers.

David Bell offers a book in NEVER COME BACK that should be read by anyone that enjoys being caught up in a story to the extinct that it becomes a part of them.

Book Summary

Elizabeth Hampton is consumed by grief when her mother dies unexpectedly. Leslie Hampton cared for Elizabeth’s troubled brother Ronnie’s special needs, assuming Elizabeth would take him in when the time came. But Leslie’s sudden death propels Elizabeth into a world of danger and double lives that undoes everything she thought she knew....

When police discover that Leslie was strangled, they immediately suspect that one of Ronnie’s outbursts took a tragic turn. Elizabeth can’t believe that her brother is capable of murder, but who else could have had a motive to kill their quiet, retired mother?

More questions arise when a stranger is named in Leslie’s will: a woman also named Elizabeth. As the family’s secrets unravel, a man from Leslie’s past who claims to have all the answers shows up, but those answers might put Elizabeth and those she loves the most in mortal danger.

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