'When I Found You' by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Official Summary:

While duck hunting one morning, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. To his shock, the child—wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat—is still alive. To his wife’s shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy…but the child’s grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she’ll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him.

Fifteen years later, the widower Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. Named Nat, the teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for Nat, and the two engage in a battle of wills that spans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him—not even when Nat suffers a trauma that changes both of their lives forever.

From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes When I Found You, an exquisite, emotional tale of the unexpected bonds that nothing in life can break.

Review:

Let me start off by saying that if it weren't for Kindle First* I wouldn't have ever heard of, never mind downloaded, 'When I Found You'. It's yet another Prime benefit that helps keep my reading list longer than it needs to be and filled with a more diverse breadth of genres. If it weren't for the services like this one, Kindle Unlimited and the Lending Library, the infamous to-be-read pile would look more like that of a Vampire Diaries fan girl then it already does... and that's (probably) saying something***.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a book review, not some free lip-service for the retail giants, so let's get on with it.

'When I Found You' is rightly billed as an emotional read, but is it "exquisite"? In a word, no. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty good and worth the journey, but I wasn't floored by it and I certainly wouldn't use a word like exquisite to describe this particular fiction. Like many others I found that the characters came across as one dimensional and lacking any sense of passion. Even then, the story itself wasn't attention grabbing though the plot has enough going on where it kept me interested.

Bottom Line: 'When I Found You' is a great, middle of the road kind of read. It's an interesting story founded on a compelling idea, but the delivery seems to be missing something that I can't quiet put my finger on so I'll just say that it feels a bit empty and leave it at that. Overall, worth the time if you're usually into reads like 'This is Where I Leave You' and 'Pearl' - although, my opinion is that both of those titles are better than this one - or you love crappy Helen Hunt movies. 

*If you haven't heard of Kindle First then let me break it down for you: Do you have an Amazon Prime subscription? If you don't, you do your primary reading on a Kindle and you're constantly looking for new titles then you should. It's a little known benefit where Kindle owners get to choose two** titles from four pre-selected early releases each month. It's a great way for lazy readers (like myself) to keep that to-be-read pile insurmountably high.

**Ah-ha! So you've heard of the program and you could've sworn that you only got one title a month, right? As of 2015 Amazon is now letting us lowly Prime subscribers increase our monthly haul to two of the four instead of just the one. Pretty exciting stuff, I know.

***Does this really surprise anyone?