Review: Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shephard

Author: Sara Shephard
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: February 2024 

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all.

Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are these women and why did Rhiannon invite her here? And that is before she learns about the community's rules (no outside phone calls, no questions about people’s pasts) and the padlock on the gate that leads out to the main road. But Lenna has other concerns, secrets from her past she is terrified will come out. When a newcomer arrives in the community, Lenna’s worst fears are confirmed—she was brought here for a reason.

Nowhere Like Home tackles themes of complicated friendships and trauma but all with Sara Shepard’s expert twists that you don’t see coming.

Nowhere Like Home is another recent thriller that ended up being largely underwhelming to me.  Lenna is a new mom who is struggling with probably post partum.  She gets a call from an old friend. Rhianna who invites her to join a community of women in the desert.   When she gets there, she quickly realizes, something is not right about the place.

As I said, I was fairly underwhelmed by this one.  First, I think maybe I am in the minority here, but I am getting tired of reading about female characters who only whine and don't ask for help.  I couldn't get behind Lenna and her choice to just leave her husband.  It wasn't fair to him.  If she needed time she should have told him before leaving.  Maybe I got the wrong impression, but he didn't seem like a bad guy.  The entire first half of the book was really slow and I probably should have DNF'd it.  The ending  was satisfying and I did like the twists, so I'll give it that.  But they weren't enough to save it for me.