Look Again by Lisa Scottoline

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Starred Review. Bestseller Scottoline (Lady Killer) scores another bull's-eye with this terrifying thriller about an adoptive parent's worst fear—the threat of an undisclosed illegality overturning an adoption. The age-progressed picture of an abducted Florida boy, Timothy Braverman, on a have you seen this child? flyer looks alarmingly like Philadelphia journalist Ellen Gleeson's three-year-old son, Will, whom she adopted after working on a feature about a pediatric cardiac care unit. Ellen, who jeopardizes her newspaper job by secretly researching the Braverman case, becomes suspicious when she discovers the lawyer who handled her adoption of Will has committed suicide. Meanwhile, Will's supposed birth mother, Amy Martin, dies of a heroin overdose, and Amy's old boyfriend turns out to look like the man who kidnapped Timothy. Scottoline expertly ratchets up the tension as the desperate Ellen flies to Miami to get DNA samples from Timothy's biological parents. More shocks await her back home. (From Amazon).

What would you do if when you picked up your mail one day you saw your child's face staring back at you from a "have you seen this child" flyer? This is exactly the situation reporter Ellen Gleeson finds herself in. Two years earlier she adopted Will after finding him sick and alone in the CICU while doing a story at the local hospital. But the more she looks at the flyer, the more she is haunted by the fact that her son just may be Timothy Braverman, who was abducted from Florida not much earlier than when Ellen adopted Will. Putting her job in jeopardy, Ellen uses her reporter skills to find out the truth. But does she really want to know? What will she do if it turns out that Will is Timmy? Can she just give up the child she loves with all her heart? Stop being the only mother he knows? Or does she keep the information to herself and allow another mother to feel the immense pain of losing her child? Soon Ellen finds out that the lawyer who handled her adoption has committed suicide, the woman listed as Will's birth mother actually not be, and no one has heard of the so called father. To try and settle things once and for all, Ellen decides to covertly collect DNA samples from Timmy's parents. But as more people start dying, Ellen realizes she has touched a nerve with someone, someone who just may want her dead. At the same time, in the dog eat dog world of reporting, her nemesis at the paper starts to put the pieces together and takes matters into her own hands. Forcing Ellen into a situation she may not have wanted.

While this is not the typical legally charged thriller that Ms. Scottoline is known for, it was an amazing story of what a mother will do for her child. How she is willing to forget about her career and potentiallly lose her child in order to do what is right for him. While I think there were too many one on one scenes with Ellen and her son, they were beautifully written and clearly expressed the love she has for him. This is a fast-paced thrillers that will have the reader realizing, not unlike Ellen herself, that nothing is exactly the way it seems. All the way up to the stunning conclusion!