REVIEW: "Don't Look For Me" by Wendy Walker
I have long been a fan of the solo road trip.
Even when work or play takes me far from home, I will often opt to travel by car instead of plane — this is due, in no small part, to the fact that I hate taking off my shoes at airport security.
But my choice to drive isn’t just about avoiding the flight. I actually enjoy the process. The peace and quiet, perfect for contemplation. The feeling of possibility that comes from the unreplicatable freedom of the open road. The opportunity to drink an unhealthy amount of Starbucks while absorbing hours of audiobooks.
I just love it.
Surprisingly, despite being a pretty huge wimp, I am not often scared when traveling alone.
The exception, of course, is if I have to pull up to a creepy gas station on a dark and stormy night. In those instances I immediately think of Natasha Gregson Wagner’s short-lived character in Urban Legends.
I wonder, though, if having read this novel my next road trip will be equally fright-free. Or if, instead, Wendy Walker has effectively planted a seed of doubt in my head. If, from now on, I will always feel ever-so-slightly unsafe on the long and lonely road.
Molly, the middle-aged protagonist of Wendy Walker’s Don’t Look For Me was certainly no stranger to traveling alone. The matriarch of a rather broken family, trapped in a rather love-less marriage, Molly often traveled to see her college-aged son play football — despite the fact that he would probably prefer that she didn’t bother.
It is while on the way home from one of these visits that Molly encounters a problem. Her car runs out of gas on the side of the road. Fortunately, she is only a short distance from a gas station. Unfortunately, that gas station — and pretty much everything else in the tiny town in which she often makes a pit stop — is shuttered as a storm is coming.
The rain is already coming down hard when she starts to trek down the road, looking for someone — anyone — to help her.
She’s not out in the elements long before a truck pulls over. The driver, a man who is accompanied by a young girl, offers her assistance. Really having no other option, she accepts, climbing into the truck.
But Molly’s relief at being rescued is short lived as it quickly becomes apparent that things aren't on the up and up. From the little girl wearing a medical facemask — a feature that would have been way creepier pre-pandemic, TBH — to the fact that the driver of the truck appears to be heading not towards help but away from it, all signs point to Molly’s concern being more than garden-variety paranoia.
Several weeks pass after this dark and stormy night into which Molly vanished without a trace. Forestalled by a lack of clues, but not willing to give up yet, Molly’s daughter, Nicole, returns to the town in which her mother’s car was found to revive what is now a fading search effort.
Years before her mother’s disappearance, a horrific accident caused a fracture in Nicole’s family. Since then, her relationship with her mother has been tenuous at best of times and downright combative at the worst. Ultimately, it’s this broken relationship and Nicole’s memory of the painful parting words she shared with her mother — words that she never imagined might have been their last — that propel Nicole forward on a search that has thus far proven frustratingly fruitless.
But people in this town have secrets. And they are holding them close.
Time is of the essence, Nicole knows. If she wants any chance of finding her mother alive, she has to move fast.
Less a leisurely road trip down twisty country highways and more a Fast and Furious-style race through city streets, this novel shot out of the gate and never slowed down.
Written in dual-perspective format, it provided painful and horrifying insight into the trauma that both women were experiencing: Molly, being held captive by a mysterious — and creepy AF — man with unclear intentions and Nicole, hunting for the mother to whom she now desperately wants to apologize for years of antagonistic behavior.
Both women were strong, robust, round characters who were flawed and realistic and, despite their brokenness, somehow profoundly likable.
Walker took a risk, here, focusing her book on two women who weren’t necessarily inherently likable. They were both rich in annoying quirks and seemingly hard to warm up to, haunted as they were by pasts full of truly horrific incidents. But readers rooted for them all the same.
In fact, I probably became even more invested in them than I would have had they been perfect paper doll versions of what a mother and a daughter should be.
Because their flaws made them more real.
Their flaws made them more relatable.
Their flaws amplified the tension and raised the stakes.
By the book’s end, I was desperate to see how it all worked out. I so intensely wanted to find out whether this mother daughter duo would reunite — which seemed unlikely — or if this abduction would truly be the nail in the coffin that housed their fully disemboweled relationship.
The degree to which I was excited for the ending of this novel probably amplified my disappointment when I finally reached it and found it wanting.
Like most contemporary thrillers, this one had a twist. And, for me, the twist fell super flat. Ultimately, it came down to believability. I simply did not believe key aspects of the twist and, for that reason, I disengaged.
I disengaged with the characters.
I disengaged with the plot.
I disengaged with the book.
While I do wish that this book had a slightly different ending — more specifically, a slightly different twist — I authentically enjoyed the majority of this novel and will absolutely be recommending it to others — if for no other reason than I want to discuss the ending with them and see if they felt as I did.
A solid, distinctive thriller that will keep you guessing, it earns 4 out of 5 cocktails.
How do you feel about road trips? Do you love to hit the open road, or instead find the process of navigating the congested highways tedious and tiresome? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
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