Release Date: August 27th, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin
Source: Publisher (NetGalley)
Rating: ★★
Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were.
Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the grace of time ... Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep—flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight years old.
All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.
This was not a good book t b h. This was one of my first reads of the new year; I'd requested it late last year because the description intrigued me but the novel wasn't at all what I'd expected, and not in a good way either. Basically the plot describes a phenomenon in which the dead return to life - instead of an undead uprising, this novel presents the dead as they were in life. Government authorities are formed to deal with the phenomenon, mostly to return the dead to their families, which presents many unforeseen problems. Our main characters, Harold and Lucille, an aged married couple face this issue - their eight old year son, drowned in an accident many years ago, is returned to them. The plot drags literally from the first page; literally nothing interesting happens, then something mildly interesting happens but don't worry it soon becomes boring again, until the end in which bemusing shenanigans occur before boredom gets settled again. Soooooooo much talking, by characters I didn't care about, and not much doing. I just...
