Aftermath

Kensie, Clara. Aftermath. 2016. 256p. ISBN 978-1440598708. Available at FIC KEN on the library shelves.

Twelve-years-old Charlotte was a cheerleader at a baseball game when she walked away with a stranger. He kidnapped her and kept her confined in his attic. For four years, Charlotte was sexually abused by the man she calls the Keeper. Found alive after the Keeper fell down his stairs and got hurt, Charlotte is reunited with her parents and her twin sister, Alexa.

During her captivity, she imagined Alexa fulfilling the dreams from the Dream Book they wrote together. Instead, her father had a memorial service for her, divorced, remarried to a woman barely ten years older than herself and they have a baby named after her. Her mother became an alcoholic and hoped she was still alive. Her sister stopped cheerleading, fell in with the bad crowd, just returned from detox, and thought she was better off dead.

Her Keeper has arrested but he refuses to talk about the girl he murdered before catching Charlotte. Charlotte can’t stop imagining his hands closing on her throat. Can Charlotte free herself of her demons and make things right? How do you reconnect to the life you left behind after so much time and so much trauma?