“Touch & Go” by Lisa Gardner – The Cost of Perfection

In Touch & Go by Lisa Gardner we are presented with the Denbe family. They are the perfect model, with the husband Justin and his wife Libby being as happy as they ever were, and their gorgeous fifteen year-old daughter, Ashlyn, living the perfect life any teenager could ask for.

They have installed themselves in one of Boston’s most prestigious neighborhoods, and they are admired by all of their family, friends and neighbors.

However, one day the family goes missing, and it’s not like they went on vacation. Investigator Tessa Leoni arrives at their house only to discover that they have left behind their most prized possessions, along with a bunch of confetti in the foyer. Everything leads the police to believe that there has been a kidnapping… but why? No ransom demands were made, there were no witnesses, and so even the motive behind this act is unknown.

The rest of the book is about how the investigator Tessa Leoni unravels bit by bit the kind of life that the Denbes actually led, discovering that their perfection actually came at a very important cost. As it happens, they have a lot of dark secrets in their closet, having weaved a true web of trust, deceit, friendship, love and betrayal.

As she discovers more and more about the family, the concept of them being kidnapped become less and less shocking... as a matter of fact, it downright makes sense at some point (at least that’s the impression I got).

Apart from the actual mystery of the family’s vanishing and their kidnapper’s identity (if there indeed is one) are certainly some of the book’s main attractions, but it also explores the theme of frailty in relation to love, family and safety, how much of an illusion it is.

It goes to show that regardless of how safe you feel or how well you think everything is going, it can all come crumbling down in an instant, a reality most of us forget about or simply refuse to face.

While I have to admit that the book wasn’t particularly deep in the themes it explored, the story itself was more than enough to keep me going; regardless of how you think it ends, you need to admit that the sheer amount of possibilities as to what happened to them is at least intriguing.

Rest assured, the ending to the book is solid, and while it isn’t groundbreaking, it wraps everything up very nicely and leaves you satisfied. All in all, I had a lot of fun with it and I recommend it to anyone who likes disappearance mysteries.

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Lisa Gardner Personal site Lisa Gardner is an American author who specializes in works of fiction, especially thrillers such as The Killing Hour and The Next Accident. In addition to that, she also penned a few romance novels under the pseudonym Alicia Scott, and claims to have heavily been influenced in her works by one of my all-time favorite movies, The Silence of the Lambs.