Given the reviews I seem to be very much in the minority, but I thought this was a wretchedly written book. It had an interesting premise. Two sisters in small-town Washington state, a child psychiatrist and the town's police chief, try to help a six-year-old feral child. My problem is that from the start the book took an overly melodramatic tone as it related Doctor Julia Cates facing a decision in a lawsuit about a tragedy involving a patient of hers. Her sister, Ellie Barton, is an incongruous mix--a chief of police with the mentality of a "small-town beauty queen." But what made this an excruciating read was the cliche-ridden prose. Sentences and phrases such as "listening to the surf, thinking how much it sounded like beat of her heart" "could have heard a pin drop" and "all hell broke loose." Goodness. There's too many good books and too little time to put up with that.
