You’ll Never Know, Dear audiobook

When a child disappears, the pain never goes away no matter how long ago it has been.Lis Woodham's four-year-old sister, Janey, along with her doll disappeared forty years ago and was never found. There were no clues about what happened then and no clues now.Each year Janey's mother, Miss Sorrel, would put an ad in the paper on the anniversary of the disappearance in hopes that someone would come forward with the doll or information about her daughter's disappearance and earn the reward offered. There never was an answer to the ad for all of those years except for now. Someone saw the ad and brought a battered doll to their house hoping it was Janey's. Before they could tell if the doll was actually Janey's, the person bringing the doll ran out of the house and disappeared.This caused more anxiety for the family, and it seemed that once the doll was returned, the family was plagued with danger. Their house was burglarized and then filled with carbon monoxide causing harm to Grandma Sorrel and Lis.The accident brought Lis's daughter, Vanessa, home to help take care of her mother and grandmother, and Vanessa got involved in the forty-year-old investigation. YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR was a mystery that will definitely hold your interest because of Ms. Ephron’s talent of drawing the reader into the story. YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR wasn't fast paced or gripping, but had just enough intrigue to keep you turning the pages.The ending revealed quite a few secrets that some of the characters wished had not been revealed and other secrets that were welcome revelations.YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR was a good mystery with tense moments and a mystery that will keep you guessing. 4/5This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

"I always knew one day she'd come home."You'll Never Know, Dear sees three generations of women dealing with a haunting past. Forty years ago, young Lissie was playing in the yard with her sister Janey. The two girls occupied themselves with handmade dolls that their mother modeled after their likeness. Lis became distracted by a dog and left her sister to play alone. That was the last time anyone ever saw little Janey.Fast forward to present day. Miss Sorrel, the girls' mother, never recovered from Janey's disappearance. Clouded in grief, she gave up on creating porcelain dolls with her friend Evelyn, but she never gave up hope that she would see her daughter again. Each year, Miss Sorrel posts an add in the paper searching for the doll that disappeared with Janey. Each year, the ad goes unanswered. But this year is different. This year, the doll has come home.Vanessa is in the midst of deep sleep when she's suddenly awakened. For years, she has studied the way people dream. She seeks a way to control actions in dreams and help people who suffer from nightmares and PTSD. She is awakened with the news of a terrible accident involving her mother and grandmother, Lis and Miss Sorrel. An explosion in Sorrel's kiln, a tool that sat mostly unused, sent the two women to the hospital and caused considerable damage to Miss Sorrel's treasured doll collection. When Vanessa arrives at her grandmother's home, she learns that Janey's long lost doll recently resurfaced. The very next day, the explosion happened. Could the doll really belong to Janey? After all these years, why did it surface now?One glance at the haunting cover of this novel was all it took to capture my attention. From the very start, You'll Never Know, Dear, captured my attention and held on to the very end. There is a timelessness to Ephron's writing that makes for an almost enchanting read. While seasoned mystery readers will probably see the ending coming, it is the nuanced characters and vivid setting that make this a worthy read. With an unsolved mystery, strong female characters, and a few creepy dolls thrown in for good measure, You'll Never Know, Dear is everything I needed in a summer read. The book is marketed as "women's fiction", but make no mistake, this suspenseful novel will have men and women reading with fervor into all hours of the night.

I bought this book based solely on the cover and I’m patting past me on the back because this cover buy was a smashing success. Not only is the cover incredibly creepy but so is the story! Dolls and disappearances make for a great combo with this book and I absolutely loved it. I don’t know why (okay I do know why, it’s because dolls freak me out) but the dolls just add an extra creep factor to the story for me and take it from good to great. I loved all the twists and turns and deep, dark family secrets as well. I’m always a sucker for twisty turny thrillers with dark secrets from the past! And this book is definitely that, it kept me guessing from page one until the very end and had my jaw dropping at certain reveals. I really couldn’t have enjoyed this book more and I highly recommend it to mystery/thriller fans!

a woman is living with her mother, who is a doll maker. Her daughter is finishing medical school. When the woman was 7, her 4 year old sister was abducted. Her mother never stopped looking for her, and every year, on the date of her abduction, she places an add in the paper offering a reward for the doll that he daughter had when she disappeared. Finally, someone does. The doll is old and in bad repair, but the mother recognizes that it is the one her daughter had. Her next door neighbor says it's not, that the mother, Miss Sorrel, just wants it to be so much that she isn't thinking clearly. The woman that brings the dolls throws the doll down and runs away, but they track her down. She and her mother have lived on the street since the daughter was born, but finally they get enough money to rent a trailer and for the daughter to go to college. The daughter at home remembers that the doll had the human hair of the lost child, so she sends it in for analysis. The results is mixed. It shows that the girls have the same mother but different fathers. They find that Miss Sorrel had an affair with the woman next doors husband, and the kidnapped child was his. The woman next door kidnapped the girl and gave her to a family who's daughter had died. She had also kidnapped another child that had been fathered by her husband and given her to another couple in her church.

A spooky thriller that'll keep you at the edge of your seat. It's every parent's worst nightmare and brilliantly conceived in You'll Never Know, Dear. I must read Ephron's other book(s). Highly recommend!My Rating: 5 stars Reviewed by: Mrs. N

A taut, wonderful mystery with a powerful sense of place and character. I couldn't put it down.

I thought this book was a delightful read on many levels. There was a lot of interesting information about the art of doll making which I did not realize is still very much present even in today's 'assembly line' culture. (My mother owned several handmade and beautifully made dolls when she was a child). Besides the doll making, as the core of the story, the location in South Carolina is described really well by the author. The story itself is quite involved and is not at all what I expected. Sorrel Woodham, known by all as Miss Sorrel, has been a doll maker for many years, and is quite well known for her beautiful and intricate work. Forty years before the present, Sorrel and her husband had three sons and two daughters, Elizabeth and Janey. One afternoon, Janey disappeared and until the present day, was never seen or heard from again. She was four years old at the time of her disappearance. Her sister, Lis, has always blamed herself for Janey being lost, because she had been distracted by a dog which ran through the area where they were playing, and Lis ran after it; when she returned just a few minutes later, Janey was gone. Every year on the anniversary of Janey's disappearance, her mother has reminded people of it through the newspapers and other media, and a reward for information which has steadily been increasing yearly, is part of the scenario. At the beginning of the book, Lis, Sorrel and Sorrel's best friend and neighbor, Evelyn, were at home doing some work on a few of the dolls, when a stranger pulled up in an old, broken down car, and left a doll which was in very bad condition, there, before she raced off in her car. The next thing: the kiln in the home explodes and Lis and Sorrel end up in the hospital due to carbon monoxide poisoning; all of Sorrel's prized dolls had been stolen at the same time. Lis's daughter Vanessa who is doing research on sleep and dreams in Rhode Island, is called and she immediately comes home. Then the fun begins. I thought the story was kind of a delightful variation and take off point for a variation of "Arsenic and Old Lace." There is a lot of humor dished up along with the suspense, and I had a great time reading it. The plot is really something else, and I would never have thought of some of the reasons for events in the story. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of surprises in this delightful story, and it also reminds the reader about the importance of DNA to all of us. I thought this just a delightful and different type of suspense novel!

Seven-year-old Lissie Woodham and her four-year-old sister Janey were playing with their porcelain dolls in the front yard when an adorable puppy scampered by. Eager to pet the pretty dog, Lissie chased after the pup as it ran down the street. When she returned to the yard, Janey’s precious doll was gone . . . and so was Janey.Forty years after Janey went missing, Lis—now a mother with a college-age daughter of her own—still blames herself for what happened. Every year on the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, their mother, Miss Sorrel, places a classified ad in the local paper with a picture of the toy Janey had with her that day—a one-of-a-kind porcelain doll—offering a generous cash reward for its return. For years, there’s been no response. But this year, the doll came home.It is the first clue in a decades-old mystery that is about to turn into something far more sinister—endangering Lis and the lives of her mother and daughter as well. Someone knows the truth about what happened all those years ago, and is desperate to keep it hidden.My Thoughts: In the opening pages of You'll Never Know, Dear, we meet Lis’s daughter Vanessa, living in Rhode Island and working on post-doctoral sleep studies. One morning, she is awakened by a vision of her grandmother, Miss Sorrel, holding a doll out to her. Soon after, a phone call summons her home to Bonsecours, South Carolina. Her mother and grandmother have been hospitalized due to an explosion at the house. Carbon monoxide poisoning keeps her grandmother hospitalized for a while. But her grandmother insists that the doll is the one she made for Janey.Once she is home, Vanessa is drawn into the search for the strange doll that might be Janey’s…but busybody neighbor Evelyn, who works with Miss Sorrel on the doll repairs, is sure that the doll is not the right one.A search leads Vanessa to the woman who brought the doll, who had disappeared when Miss Sorrel asked her where she got the doll…and from there, we follow some twisty pathways to unexpected answers.Why is the doll that Miss Sorrel first saw now different? Was Miss Sorrel seeing things, or had someone switched the dolls? What happened to all the other dolls the night of the explosion? Were they stolen, and by whom? Why does every path that seems the right one suddenly become even more twisted?The characters drew me in, and I was captivated by the quest for answers. There were characters that seemed very suspicious to me. Why did they seem to be everywhere and always keeping Vanessa and Lis from the answers? I had my eye on one particular character, but the extent of the deception was so layered and seductive that I literally could not put the book down. Another brilliant read from Ephron. 5 stars.

When a book can surprise the hell out of me with an ending I had no idea was coming....that is a good suspense thriller! Will definitely read more from this author!Having never read anything from this author, i was thoroughly surprised with how well her writing was, and to think that I thought i had it all figured out, no way. Now this book kind of reminded me of a book I had read in my early 20's titled 'Savage Ransom' but this really had a great twist in the story and this doll on the cover was a PERFECT image of what I pictured in the story. So, 40 years ago, Lissie and her 4 year old sister Janey are playing in their front yard with their favorite dolls (that just happened to be made by their mother, who is a doll artist and creator) and playing Tea Time, when a cute little puppy runs by catching Lissies attention.....well what do little kids do when they see a puppy, then want to pet it. She leaves the front yard leaving her baby sister alone with her doll to seek out the puppy, with no luck she comes back to the yard......only to discover Janey's doll is missing, and SO IS JANEY!! Every year since then, Miss Sorrell, their mother puts a Reward Posting in the paper asking for the safe return of the daughter or the doll, and it is a lot of money.....after no such returns, well this year the doll comes home. Now with Lissie being a mother of a college aged daughter herself, Vanessa, who is a sleep study specialist, and when Vanessa is called home to the family's estate because her grandmother has a health scare, the suspense and story unfold. And let me tell you it is a story that any fan of suspense thrillers needs to read.....I LOVED it! This one got 3.5 Stabbys 🔪 from me

Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.Full disclosure: I can't be entirely objective in this review because it's based on my town, I'm thanked in the acknowledgements, and the author did a program at the library for me for free when she was in town researching the book. That being said, she captures Beaufort (Bonsecours in the novel) SO WELL. The descriptions of the town and Lowcountry lifestyle are perfect, but I was especially impressed at how spot-on she depicted the way everyone in small Southern towns knows each other's business and the tension between social classes.There were a couple of very nice reveals in the book (although one made the identity of the villain very obvious to me), and of course there's nothing creepier than dolls.

A good solid mystery that crosses into Southern Gothic territory with a matriarch that lives in a house filled with dolls, many of which she has created herself. Miss Sorrel had been making realistic dolls since her daughters were born and turned that skill into a small business after her youngest daughter was kidnapped. She then stopped when another girl, expecting one of her dolls, was also kidnapped in the same community. Every year Miss Sorrel places an ad in the paper offering a reward for the return of her missing daughter's special doll. Forty years later, the doll appears and the pieces of that long ago crime slowly begin to surface. The tale is well-told and the setting fits the plot. This mystery moves quickly, so you won't want to put the book down. I received my copy from the publisher through Edelweiss.

Forty years is a long time to hope for the return of your child.Seven-year old Lissie Woodham chased after a puppy instead of watching her four-year-old sister, Janey. The little girl along with the special signature doll made by her mother were never seen again. Every year on the anniversary of the day Janey went missing her mother offers a reward for the return of the doll. After forty years someone brings a doll forward that could be Janey’s doll. Lissie and her own daughter, Vanessa, search for clues to find out what happened all those years before.The story weaves around abduction, betrayal, and attempted murder before the truth finally comes out.This is a well written mystery that teaches you a lot about doll making. I had my suspicions of who the guilty party might be but kept on with the story to find out for sure and why it happened.I listened to this on audio.

Two sisters are playing in the yard with their custom-made dolls when the younger girl disappears. The family never fully recovers. Forty years later a young woman arrives with a doll but flees the elderly mother's questions before she can explain where she got the toy. In a well-structured and well-paced story, Ephron explores the hold of nearly lifelong grief on three generations of women faced with at long last discovering what happened to the younger child.

This was a page turner. A 4 year old girl is abducted 40 years ago from her front yard and was never found. Her mother hand made dolls and the doll was with her. 40 years later the same doll turns up. Is the woman with the doll the missing child? What happened to her? This mystery is a huge part of the story along with 3 generations of women coming to terms with it.

I enjoyed this interesting mystery that deals with the disappearance of a little girl from the backyard of her home. Decades later clues begin to emerge as to the current identity of little Janey. This is one of those books that you can't put down until you find out what happens.