The Boy in the Photo by Nicole Trope is a highly suspenseful, engrossing present-day novel that takes place in Australia.

Megan takes her six-year-old son Daniel to school, but at the end of the school day when she goes to pick him up, he isn’t there. Megan frantically goes into the school to search for him, but learns his father has picked him up. The arrangement is that Greg, her abusive, former husband, only has supervised visits with his son. A search begins, but with no success.

Six years later, her current husband Michael, a police detective, calls from work to tell her they’ve found Daniel. The twelve-year old boy seemingly wandered into a police station, dirty, disheveled and confused.

When Daniel, now twelve, is returned to Megan he is full of hate and anger. Slowly, the story of living with his bitter, controlling father surfaces. Megan and Michael patiently try to work with the boy, but there is always something strange and sinister hovering over them.

The story toggles through the years in time from the anniversary date of Daniel’s disappearance to the present day, both from the boy and his mother’s point of view.

The Boy in the Photo is a psychological read that kept me eagerly turning the pages. I could feel Megan’s pain, sadness and desperation both before Daniel’s disappearance and after he is returned to her. To have a child kidnapped by an estranged parent is uncommon but not unheard of, and as I read this novel, I realized that much of the story is probably realistic. This novel shows the strong bond between mother and child, and the confusion and trauma that occurs when that union is threatened.