Blog Tour & Review: The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal

Title:The Lost Ones

Author:Sheena Kamal

Series:Nora Watts, #1

Published:July 2017, William Morrow

Format:Hardcover, 352 pages

Source:Publisher via TLC Book Tours

A dark, compulsively readable psychological suspense debut, the
first in a new series featuring the brilliant, fearless, chaotic, and
deeply flawed Nora Watts—a character as heartbreakingly troubled,
emotionally complex, and irresistibly compelling as Stieg Larsson’s
Lisbeth Salander and Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole.

It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen
years—since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption.
Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and
aren’t looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to
her birth mother as a last hope.

A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred
by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what
happens to vulnerable girls on the streets. Caring despite herself, she
sets out to find Bonnie with her only companion, her mutt Whisper,
knowing she risks reopening wounds that have never really healed—and
plunging into the darkness with little to protect her but her instincts
and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.

The search uncovers a puzzling conspiracy that leads Nora on a
harrowing journey of deception and violence, from the gloomy rain-soaked
streets of Vancouver, to the icy white mountains of the Canadian
interior, to the beautiful and dangerous island where she will face her
most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been
born.

My thoughts:I love when I come across a new series that I can jump into right at the start and this is just that! And to find that it’s the author’s debut novel is just icing on the cake – this is an intriguing thriller that pulled me in right from the start and when I saw that it was being compared to Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Sander and Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole, how could I not want to read it?

I loved the protagonist that we meet in this series – Nora Watts is a kick-ass, flawed protagonist, that’s for sure! She certainly has her own demons and as the story progresses, there are moments when you aren’t quite sure if she is always reliable or not, but you always end up rooting for her. There are times she is her own worst enemy. She is equal parts complicated and fascinating and you can’t help but want to know everything there is to know about her.

This is a gritty, dark thriller with an unpredictable storyline. The atmospheric setting only adds to the already tense situations that seem to crop up at times, and the short chapters help that along as well. Secrets abound and Nora’s investigation into Bonnie’s disappearance gets close to home as it takes some unexpected twists and turns. 

I loved that this book is told in the first-person POV – getting inside Nora’s head really allowed us to know her and engage with her. She’s truly a unique character and I am looking forward to continuing to watch her develop as this series progresses. I think this book just scratched the surface of her character! 

This was a great thriller and start to a new series. I am already counting down the days til the next book comes out. 

About the Author:  Sheena Kamal holds an
HBA in political science from the University of Toronto, and was awarded
a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism
around the issue of homelessness. Kamal has also worked as a crime and
investigative journalism researcher for the film and television
industry—academic knowledge and experience that inspired this debut
novel. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Author Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook  | Instagram 

Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & NobleBe sure to check out all the other stops on the blog tour and follow the tour on Twitter (hashtags:  #TLCBookTours & #TheLostOnes).