Off the deep end : a thriller /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the bestselling author of The Best of Friends comes a heart-stopping psychological thriller about the shades of truth and the power of lies in the wake of one mother's unspeakable loss.

Therapist turned stay-at-home mom Jules Hart's idyllic suburban life shatters when she crashes her car into an icy lake. Her son and another teenage boy plunge into the water with her, but Jules can only manage to save one--the wrong one.

Reeling from the death of her son, Jules spirals into a violent and unstable mental state. Ten months after the accident, she's still trying to reckon with the fact that she rescued Isaac Greer, another woman's child, when Isaac suddenly vanishes.

Jules finds herself at the center of a massive police investigation. While she harbors her own dangerous secrets, Jules is adamant that she didn't take Isaac. But then who did? Is Isaac the victim of a dangerous killer who's been targeting boys in the Midwest? Or is someone else pulling the strings in this deadly game?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

An accident that devastates one family leads to a kidnapping investigation in another in Berry's (Under Her Care) novel. The points of view shift between former marriage counselor Jules, who lost her son, Gabe, in a car accident while she was driving, and Amber, whose son, Isaac, survived the accident. The story begins when Isaac goes missing 10 months later. Jules is being interviewed by an FBI forensic psychologist while FBI agents also suspect a serial killer who has kidnapped and murdered two other teenage boys in the region. Jules unravels her story of the special connection that she shares with Isaac. Amber's family is under a microscope while the FBI searches for Isaac, placing a strain on her marriage and their daughter. Amber is convinced that Jules has some involvement while her shocked husband is expecting to hear their son is the third victim of the serial killer. Amber's story tells of Isaac's struggles following the accident, including the bullying and depression that lead him to believe he should have been the one who died. As the authorities work to solve the case, Amber and Jules come to their own realizations, leading to an unexpected ending. VERDICT This is a well-done mystery with a plausible yet surprising ending.--Linda Gray

Publishers Weekly Review

Suburban Minneapolis therapist Jules Hart, the protagonist of this gripping psychological thriller from Berry (The Best of Friends), plunges her car into an icy lake while trying to avoid hitting a deer. Trapped in the car are Gabe, her teenage son, and his friend Isaac Greer. When Jules tries to rescue Gabe, she pulls Isaac free instead, and Gabe drowns. The guilt-ridden Jules, her marriage broken, ends up at a psychiatric facility. After Jules leaves the facility, where she spends more than a month, Isaac goes missing and the police fear he's the latest victim of a serial killer targeting teenage boys; Isaac's mother thinks Jules is responsible, given her insistence in the accident's aftermath on seeing and talking to Isaac and bonding with him over their shared near-death experience. Jules's efforts to answer her therapist's questions without revealing Isaac's confidences are complicated by her struggles with guilt. No one seems above suspicion in Isaac's disappearance, and everyone seems to have something to hide. As the suspense mounts, the action drives to a harrowing conclusion. Berry delivers the goods. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen. (Jan.)

Kirkus Book Review

All too soon after (mostly) living through an unimaginable trauma, a pair of Minnesota families are plunged into an even darker nightmare. Juliet "Jules" Hart continues to be agonized by memories of the night she skidded to avoid a deer, sending her car onto, then into, an ice-covered lake. She succeeded in rescuing one of the boys in the back seat--not Gabe, her son, but Isaac Greer, the schoolmate whose mother, Amber, had asked Jules to pick him up. As she struggles to make sense of her life without her son or her husband, Shane, who's taken up with another woman, the only person Jules seems able to connect with is Isaac, a dedicated introvert who talked with her about more things than you'd expect a 15-year-old to have in common with a 41-year-old until Amber, alarmed by their intimacy, took out a restraining order against Jules. Then Isaac goes missing while he's walking the family dog. Has he been taken by the Dog Snatcher, who's already kidnapped and killed two other boys and attempted to snatch a third? Is his disappearance the work of a copycat? Or is it connected, as Falcon Lake Police Det. Hawkins assumes it must be, to his miraculous survival of the car wreck at the hands of a mother who thought she was saving her own son? As usual, Berry tightens the screws smartly in the opening pages and never lets up, and as usual, her ending is more intent on deepening the nightmare than providing a plausible explanation for it. Warning: The title applies as much to the audience as to the characters. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.