Blog Tour, Review & Giveaway: Misplaced – Lee Murray

Welcome to the Blog tour + Review for the awesome book Misplaced by Lee Murray. This book follows Adam a 17 year old boy (Almost 18) dealing with his ‘missing’ mum. Why have I put missing between brackets? Well it’s because this book has taught me that missing can have several meanings.
This book is dedicated to Florence Bloise, who disappeared February 2003 in France and is also ‘misplaced’.

You can find the rest of the Xpresso Blog Tour Schedule here.

Misplaced by Lee Murray
Publication date: December 1st 2013
Genres: Mystery, New Adult

Synopsis

Dream cars have no registration plate…

One evening, Adam’s mum pops out for the milk and doesn’t come back, launching a frantic nationwide search. Yet after weeks with no leads, the television crews drift away, the police start asking hairy questions, and Adam’s dad starts seeing someone else. Adam’s life is falling apart. But then he meets Skye, who it seems has misplaced a parent too, and things start to look up. That is, until a body is found…

You can purchase Misplaced at Amazon.

My thoughts

I have received this ebook in exchange for a review.

Adam is a very like-able teenage boy, and even though I had to get used to the writing in the beginning, I started to want to turn the pages quicker to see how Adam is coping with his misplaced mother. How many times have you read a story on the news about someone who just popped out to grab some more milk, or just to grab a forgotten thing from the corner shop and to never return? This is such a story. I was really feeling Adam’s struggles, his disbelief at first and hoping or knowing that his mother would walk through the door any minute. Then his blaming himself for her disappearance. Why didn’t Adam shut down his computer game and went out and got some milk? Why wasn’t he studying his French, why hasn’t he paid closer attention to his mom’s appearance, her emotions during that last interaction. Then we go through the anger fase, anger with everyone; his dad, his mum for leaving him, again for himself but then also we see closure and peace.
This journey was wonderfully written by Lee Murray and at times it really choked me up with emotions, I was really feeling his emotions and wanting to know how Adam was doing.

His friends are a blessing, they really understood when he needed someone to listen to, when he needed someone to lighten the mood and when he needed to be put back on the straight and narrow. He couldn’t have wished for better friends really. The school, the police all treated him as a grieving teenage boy instead of belittling him or hiding away the truth. Of course you have the people who don’t know how to cope with a situation like this, which is fair enough when you haven’t been in this situation but very refreshing to read those reactions from Adam’s point of view. Certainly it made me aware of how not to respond and definitely not to ignore the ‘elephant in the room’ as they say.
I really liked him and Skye, slowly getting through their journey together and it wasn’t the well I just met you let’s be in love. It was like a typical young love which was really nice to read, although at some point I started to believe Skye’s mum didn’t really exist.. but she did made an appearance after all ^_^

But most of all I found the relationship between Adam and his dad really interesting to read. The way they had to deal with this sudden misplacement of his mum, the awkwardness of a dad towards his son, who you see struggling but have no clue in how to deal with this situation. But also when Adam finds out things about his dad – how they coped and dealt with it. Adam in a typical teenage way – I felt I was also helping Adam defend himself and his mum ^_^. But also seeing how there might have been issues in the marriage but never been noticed and how his dad tries to deal with not only a missing wife, a grieving and confused son but also tries to live his life which he had planned to do so in this fashion at some point, but never in this kind of situation.

As I have travelled around in New Zealand I was able to recognise and place a lot of places and areas mentioned in this book. I loved that bit, especially Rotorua has got some special memories for me especially the lake and it really helped with getting sucked into Adam’s story.

All in all I thought this was a really good read and a really good book. Definitely worth the read and I would highly recommend this book to others.

Giveaway

Tour wide giveaway – Open INTL:
–50$ Amazon Gift Card + eBook copy of Misplaced – http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/ZDA0MjUxMjM1OGRlZWRmZWM1YmUyMmFkYTM3OWE5OjQ4OQ==/

Author Bio

Lee Murray is a full-time writer and editor with masters degrees in science and management. Lee wrote Misplaced after a friend, Florence, went missing from her home in France in 2003. Sadly, Florence is still missing. Lee lives in Tauranga, New Zealand with her husband and their two teenaged children.

Website – Goodreads