Daniel was six years old when his father, Megan Stanthorpe’s ex-husband, Greg, picked him up early from school and took off with him. Six years have since passed, and not a day has gone by that his mother hasn’t thought about him: how he’s doing, whether his father is taking proper care of him, and if she will ever see her “beautiful boy” again. It’s been six years of police investigations, media coverage, private investigators, new leads, and devastating disappointments. Megan remained constant, always hopeful.

The lead police investigator on Daniel’s missing-person case had promised to find her son and never gave up. Year after year, he stayed in touch with the heart-broken young mother and their regard for one another eventually blossomed into something much deeper. This past year, he and Megan wed, and they have an infant daughter together, Evie.  Then the call comes; Daniel has been found.

Of course, he’s no longer the six-year-old that slept with Billy Blanket. Time has passed, and Daniel is now a changed, sullen pre-teen who says Greg is dead, killed in a fire that destroyed the rough shack in the bush where they’d been hiding for the past year. But there is a mystery surrounding Daniel’s reappearance: something’s just not right with his story. Megan and the police have questions, and Daniel isn’t answering any of them.

THE BOY IN THE PHOTO by Nicole Trope is a great domestic thriller that gets your heart racing and your feelings involved from the first page. Megan is a likable, sympathetic young woman, and you feel all the emotions she does as she deals with her manipulative and controlling ex-husband, his horrible parents (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), the disappearance of her son, and his sudden and miraculous return. I hurt for Megan as she groped her way through how to act and react to the changed boy, second-guessing decisions right along with her like a Monday morning quarterback. My heart also ached for young Daniel during the chapters relating what transpired during his years away. Through it all, though, there seemed to be cloud overhead; things were just not what they appeared, and something big was yet to happen. I was right.

I found this to be an electric reading experience, with all the emotions reaching out to immerse me in the story. I highly recommend THE BOY IN THE PHOTO to readers of domestic thrillers and women’s fiction.