The Return of Ellie Black ★★★★☆

• Format: 320 pages, Kindle Edition
• Published: May 7, 2024, by Simon & Schuster
• ISBN: 9781668023952 (ISBN10: 1668023954)
• ASIN: B0CL5F94SL
• Language: English

Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers.

It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.

But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.

The debut thriller from New York Times bestselling author Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black is both a feminist tour de force about the embers of hope that burn in the aftermath of tragedy and a twisty page-turner that will shock and surprise you right up until the final page.

Notable Highlights

There was no way Kat could know a dollar figure was attached to each case. A careful calculation multiplied by parents’ wealth, then divided by race and religion. The poorer and darker a girl, the less funds and time the department allocated to her rescue—after all, the public is a little less outraged when those types of girls go missing. Maybe Ellie’s mom could sense it—some daughters were worth more than others. [loc. 205]

Why did no one ever tell Lydia that the most dangerous thing in the world isn’t natural disasters or wars or weapons? It is unremarkable men with beautiful smiles and even bigger promises. [loc. 3653]