Nine

Zoe Johnson. Waitress, small town girl with next to no past history, nearly no friends and zero relatives, she's all intrigue. Zoe prefers to work and keep to herself whenever she's not working, head down, eyes averted. Never arouse the curiosity of strangers or other customers. Follow the plan, no strings attached, no unsavory consequences, run on automatic. That all changes one weird day when a strange girl blows into the diner Zoe works at. Time seems to stand still. No memories of where she's from, why she's been on the road, or even who she is. No money, no ID, no phone, just the clothes on her back. A completely baffling mystery. This had a very curious, and quite strange but promising plot. I found it to have some words though that I definitely wouldn't use as a Christian, much less when claiming to be a Christian author. Easily marked out nonetheless. I also found the interrogation/torture scene to be very distasteful, queasy and needlessly graphic. You can describe true to life things without getting gross about it. It's not needful, nor appropriate. Lucy's origins were very eerie, though,  as in so creepy I could see that as being a very probable possibility. With how things are handled in the deep state regions of the system, and very dark, underhanded things going on daily and brushed off as nothing, it left me chilled to the core. Definitely not a nighttime casual read.  This is also for sure not a book I would let my young teen siblings read, simply because of the heavy and dark subject matter. This is a book I won't keep, much less reread, and I doubt I'll pick up one of Ms. Dekker's, or her father's books again.