Homesick
Heimweh
Crime, Mystery
Marc Raabe
Zaffre
June 8th 2015
ebook
430
German
Isabel Adey
February 18, 2019 March 2, 2019
Jesse Berg is a successful paediatrician. Newly divorced, he spends his time caring for his young daughter, Isa. But Jesse has secrets in his past. Things he doesn't talk about.
When Jesse's ex-wife is murdered and his daughter abducted, his life spirals out of control. At the scene of the murder there is a message left for him. A message that makes it clear that he was the intended target of the attack.
Jesse would do anything to find Isa, and as a long-forgotten debt comes to light, he realises he must do the one thing he never wanted to do: go back to his past, and back to his old home. A place that almost killed him. A place where he learned to fight back.
About the book
The book takes place in two time frames, present with the story of Jesse and Jule trying to find and save Jesse’s daughter and the past in which we know the Jesse’s life at the institute where he was brought after being tormented by his violent father.
Jesse’s mother is dead, the father blames his uncle for killing her and also keeps telling Jesse that his brother was better. But Jesse doesn’t remember his brother actually he believes that he’s imaginary, he believes that is another way for his father to torture and hurt him.
When he can’t take it anymore, he manages to have social services intervene but this leads him to the institute of Adlershof directed by Alfred. Even here, however, life is not easy, but here he meets Sandra, his future wife who will give him a beautiful daughter, Isa. Or is it true? What happened before the “accident”? Jesse doesn’t remember, because while he was at the institute something happened that made him lose the memory of the boy he was before. But is this true? He doesn’t even remember his father! And why does that past seem to come back only now?
I started reading this book, because I already had it, but I was not totally convinced. I read the two previous books by the author and they didn’t impress me. But as usual, having spent money, I decided to read it anyway when the “random number generator” chose me this book* See note at the end. At first I didn’t like it, I don’t like it when the protagonist is involved in a crime that he hasn’t committed. So I decided to read a chapter or two a day.
I have to say that going forward I started to like the book, when Jule stop doubting Jesse, but then she falls back to old habit and I was annoyed again. This book gives me mixed feelings, because on one side I like some scenes, on the other I don’t know how to feel.
In the end, I liked the story in general, I found the fight between Jesse and Raphael boring (I won’t tell you who Raphael is to not reveal anything) but know that I haven’t read that chapter, because the fight is too long. The backstory is fascinating, I must admit that I was a bit biased against this book because of the two previous ones, but I must say that this is the one I liked the most of the three. And I must say that I read the end (almost 250 pages) in less than two days because, and this is a positive note, the chapters are very short.
* Note: I have books “to read” inn my Goodreads page and every one of them has a number, I ask google to give me a random number and then check which book corresponds to that number. If the number is part of a series and the book comes after another unread book, I read the first unread book in the series. That’s how I choose which book to read.
