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Book Review – Leave No Trace – Mindy Mejia

Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia

Published: 04 September 2018, By Quercus Books

Swathi’s Rating: 4.5/5

Verdict: A nail-biting page Turner.

Happy accidents happen occasionally in life, leaving us in an overwhelming sea of memories. One such accident is this book to me!! Thanks to Quercus Books for such a lovely recommendation. I had heard about Mindy’s previous book but this is the first time I got to read it. I started digging into it right away, almost abandoning my then-open-book. Before I start sharing my experiences, here is a short brief of the storyline. Enjoy!

Leave No Trace blog tour poster updated.jpg
I’m so thrilled to be involved in this blog tour! Doesn’t the cover look fabulous?

Plot:

Ten years after a boy and his father went missing in the wilderness of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, the boy – who is no longer a boy – walks back out of the forest. He is violent and uncommunicative. The authorities take him to Congdon Mental Institution in Duluth, on the edge of mighty Lake Superior.

There, language therapist Maya Stark is given the task of making a connection with this boy/man who came back from the dead. But their celebrity patient tries to escape and refuses to answer any questions about his father or the last ten years of his life. In many ways he is old far beyond his years; in others, still a child.

But Maya, who was abandoned by her own mother, has secrets, too. And as she’s drawn closer to this enigmatic boy, she’ll risk everything to reunite him with his father who has disappeared from the known world – but at what cost to herself?


Author Bio:

mindyMindy Mejia received her MFA from Hamline University and published her first novel, The Dragon Keepers, with Ashland Creek Press. She lives and writes in Minnesota. She writes what she likes to read: contemporary, plot-driven books that deliver both entertainment and substance. The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman was her first novel to be published in the UK, now followed by Leave No Trace. Find her on twitter at @MejiaWrites. Her official Website https://mindymejia.com.

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Swathi’s Review:

Have you ever wondered how a novel could teach you so many things in life, that sometimes cannot be learn even with lifetime experience?

Leave No Trace is a story that deals with depression, social awareness, loneliness, anti-social behavior, childhood trauma and many other factors that can alter a person’s life for a very long time. Mindy has done extensive research before uttering her words into the pages, because giving life to a story are the characters with specific abnormalities and a solution that could save their lives.

Some books are driven by story, but some are led by the characters that haunt us until we fall in love with them. It could be due to various factors. To me, I liked the honesty in Lucas and Maya. Both of them affected by childhood traumas, parents who abandoned them, deprived from affection, care and therefore becoming anti-social personalities. This connection between is not very obvious to the readers at the beginning, but slowly, as the characters get to meet each more often, they see their similarities. So does the readers.

Maya works in a psychological Institute as a Speech Therapist. Now, this is the first time I’m learning what a speech therapist does. Apparently there are so many people out there, who find it difficult to even utter a word out of their mouth. Affected and altered by some trauma in life, some such people get help by therapists from renown Institutes. This made me realize, how lucky I am. I can talk, express what I feel, even when it is to write it out! Imagine it, if you cannot do any of that? That feeling is horrible enough.

The story is centered on Maya. I’ve had love, pity, anger, and applause for Maya throughout the storyline, as I tried to understand her character. A strange chemistry develops with Lucas, which at some point becomes sweet and hard-to-get, finally becoming a hot romance! I mentally begged the author to make them kiss! “Oh please, let them kiss!” To find out if that happened or not, you’ll have to get yourself a copy of this wonderful book!

I received this book from this publisher in exchange of my honest review. All the opinions are my own.

Happy reading. XoXo!

 

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