What Remains is a twisted tale of heroism and what follows in a nightmare scenario with mentally troubled individuals in the mix. Wendy Walker takes readers through sensitive matters and handles them with brutal honesty that depicts the emotional turmoil without diluting it in the slightest.
Detective Elise Sutton’s life alters when she walks into a department store and is confronted with an active-shooter situation. She is forced to make a terrible choice but is hailed as a hero, especially by the person whose life she saved. That is until she connects with him and realizes he’s a far more dangerous man than she could have anticipated who begins to threaten not just her but her family. Not only must Elise grapple with the horrors of her choice, but she must hunt down a man whose real identity is known to no one, all before he destroys her life.
Wendy Walker skillfully dissects her protagonist in all the ways that make her tick, providing an uncanny feeling of being both stalked and stalking as we dig into the rabbit hole with Elise as she slowly unravels as a wife, mother, and a cop. It also helps make the hunt for the stalker all the more dangerous and anxiety-inducing through the emotional turmoil that flies right off the pages.
Even when there isn’t something terrifying happening in the pages, Walker subtly conveys an underlying tone of apprehension and unease with respect to how Elise comes to grip with letting down her guards with a total stranger who is hellbent on ruining her life unless she gives into his demands. The paranoia feels so palpable that it reverberates into the hearts and minds of the readers.
I was deeply surprised and disturbed by the raw aura of What Remains and it’s one of the many reasons that I enjoyed reading the book so much.
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