Review - No Place Like Home by Mary Higgins Clark

Thanks to my dad, again, for supplying me with something to read a few months ago when I had nothing.

No Place Like Home by Mary Higgins Clark was definitely a suspenseful and exciting read with an amazing twist at the end.

In a riveting thriller from the #1 bestselling Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to the childhood home she wanted to leave behind forever -- and where her hidden past emerges with a new and deadly twist.

Ten-year-old Liza Barton shoots her mother while trying to protect her from her violent husband -- Liza's stepfather. While the death is ruled accidental, the tabloids still compare Liza to the child murderess Lizzie Borden.

Liza's adoptive parents change her name to Celia and try to erase all traces of her past. Widowed after a brief marriage in which she had a son, Jack, she remarries a young lawyer. Celia is happy until, on her birthday, he presents her with a gift -- the house where she killed her mother. On moving in, they find the words LITTLE LIZZIE'S PLACE - BEWARE painted in red letters on the lawn. When the real estate agent who sold the house to her husband is murdered, she becomes a suspect. As she struggles to prove her innocence, Celia and her little son are being stalked by the killer.

Seriously, how could you not want to read it after that?

We go through the process of moving back into Celia's, er, Liza's... whatever you want to call her for now... childhood home with her. Her apprehension and nerves and fear grow right along with your own. When she becomes a suspect in the murder of the real estate agent you want to roll your eyes and shake the people who are accusing her.

She struggles to prove her complete and total innocence in the death of her mother. Tries to find a way to prove that she was trying to defend her, not kill her. That she had actually been aiming for her stepfather, Ted Cartwright, who had, for whatever reason, not been entirely welcome in the house the night her mother died. Think she succeeds?

I switched to the other call as Alex started out the back door. He must have heard me gasp, because he turned quickly, but then I hung up the phone. "The beginning of a sales pitch," I lied. What I had heard was a husky voice, obviously disguised, whispering "May I speak to Little Lizzie, please?"

This was the first Mary Higgins Clark novel that I'd ever read. I tell you, I was not disappointed. It was suspenseful, frustrating, and thrilling all at the same time. The kind of story where you literally find yourself biting your nails as you read. Or at least I did.

If you like mystery and suspense I definitely recommend No Place Like Home as a book for you. Like I said, I hadn't a lot of other options at the time as far as books went at that point in time, so reading this was taking a step out of the general norm for me (I have read others like this, but I don't usually as a rule), but I was glad that I did.

It was published back in 2008 so if you're interested in it you can probably find it in your local library!