I really enjoyed this story. Will definitely recommend it to others

This book was the strangest book ever. At first I thought it was so twisted that I didn't like it but as the book went on, things began to make more sense. I still didn't love the main character, but I understood why she was the way she was. I didn't personally love the story, but I did think it was a very well thought out plot. It wasn't one that I've seen before. Nothing so far out there that it is unbelievable.

Unfortunately, I did not care for this book. I had trouble getting into the story and the characters weren't that interesting to me. The writing was ok, and the story moved along at a good pace. While the plot appealed to me, there was too much drama. If you like drama-filled, dark, family secrets and ruined lives, then this might be the book for you. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Seeking Sarah was a wonderful story. This book was so vivid and close to real life that I wasn't sure I'd be able to get through it, but I'm so glad I did. My heart literally ached for this poor precious girl. She had experienced so much pain in her young life. Ms. Billingsly definitely has a talent for sharing the emotions of a character and the feeling our atmosphere within a group.

Brooke Green doesn’t believe in forever love. She believes that the people you love almost always leave.
So when her boyfriend, Trent surprises her with a marriage proposal. Brooke is tongue-tied. But as they are in a room full of people, she knows she has to say something. She finally manages to say yes but all the while her mind is spinning with questions and doubts.

All she can think about is the two loves she’d lost. She swore she’d never do this again.
She has good reason to feel nervous with everything that happened in her past.

“One fatal bullet altered the course of my life”

When Brooke’s father suddenly passes away, Brooke is devastated. On his death-bed he apologized to Brooke but wasn’t able to say what he was apologizing for. She hears her grandmother reassure her father that see saying “I will tell her”. Brooke has no idea what to expect and what her grandmother tells her shocks her to her core.

Her mother passed away when she was seven years old. Well that’s what she was told. But her grandmother tells her that her mother is actually alive, that she walked out on Brooke and her father all those years ago. Her father thought it would be easier for Brooke to mourn her mother’s death than to feel abandoned.
Throughout the book are flashbacks to times Brooke remembers when her mother was still around.
When she sees the life her mother is living now, Brooke is livid. Now she’s not sure what she wants. Part of her wants to see if there is a chance for a relationship but another part of her just wants revenge. Plus she needs to decide how she feels about the future, with Trent or without.

This book examines the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters. Can anything ever replace a mother’s love?

This was completely different from what I was expecting. The characters were a complicated bunch. I felt for Brooke and all that she had been through but some of her decisions were a little over the top. There was a lot going on. The story-line was interesting but there was a lot of drama and at times it was a bit predictable. In the end, I thought it was a decent read with a good message about the power of love and forgiveness.

Thank you Netgalley and Gallery Books for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It started out ok, but then it went into complete soap opera drama. Brooke was a character I struggled with. I could sympathize with her need to find her Mom and find the truth. She just went off the rails. It was a quick, confusing and just too much for me kind of read.

The writing was pretty good for the most part. There were times I wanted to start reading something else but I wanted to find out how it would end.

The bond between a mother and daughter is complex. It can be nonexistent or the best friendship ever. Brooke Green has lived with the pain of losing her mother since she was seven years old. Her father did the best he could raising her but couldn't possibly fill that void. Funerals bring out family secrets and Brooke's father's funeral was no exception. Brooke received shocking news: her mother, Sarah, was actually alive.

Brooke doesn't understand how a mother could just abandon her family so she starts searching for Sarah. She finds her living in Atlanta with a brand new family. In an effort to get answers, Brooke works her way into their family for revenge.

What a doozy of a novel! Very well done and page-turning. It is twisted and full of drama. I cannot imagine how a mother could abandon her child, no matter how complicated life may seem. But the author does a good job of conveying emotions of the characters. I dropped my jaw on a couple occasions while reading. Go ahead and add Seeking Sarah to your TBR piles; it is well worth the read.

Happy Belated Pub Day, ReShonda Tate Billingsley. Seeking Sarah is now available.

LiteraryMarie

What a wonderful day it is. Brooke Hayes becomes engaged to to the most wonderful man. He's not only a Sergeant in the Navy, but he's gorgeous too! Brook Hayes feels like she has the world in her hands. What could possibly go wrong? Imagine thinking that your mother passed away when you were a little girl. You grow up with your father, who showered you with much love. However, your father continues to grieve for his wife, until the day that he dies. Brooke has flashbacks of interactions with her mother, when she was a small child. She also has flashbacks of her father and mother arguing constantly about her mother wanting to leave. Brooke gets a call that her father is in the hospital, and he's very ill. But on his death bed, he says to daughter he is sorry. She doesn't know why he would say that. She asks her grandmother what he meant by saying, "I am so sorry." Her grandmother finally shares the secret that's been kept from her for decades. What does it have to do with her mother? What's this secret? Why did her father keep it from her? How will this secret affect her relationship with her Fiance and her upcoming marriage? How can one second change a person's entire lifetime? So many questions. Brooke decides to pursue answers to these questions. I enjoyed the overall plot, but feel that the character development could have been done in more detail. I became confused with some of the characters in the book because of this. Moral of the story is that revenge and vindication are not always what we expect them to be!

Sometimes a book is hard to read. It is hard to digest. It is hard to not to take it personally and think objectively. And, then it is hard to write a review. That is how I feel about Seeking Sarah. I'd read a few pages and then would need to take a break. Read a few more pages and then take another break. This book could have easily been read in one sitting, but it took a few days because of that.

I rolled my eyes and angrily wiped the tears from my face. "There is nothing for you to say. Complicated or not, you don't abandon your kid. End of story." I gritted my teeth. "You have no idea what you've done to me."

Folks will learn one way or the other the damage they create when they decide to abandon their child. I'm not saying what is done in this book is right, but I understand. Seeking Sarah will have you feeling some type of way and make you wonder about your own morals because you understand Brooke and her actions. Family ties, rejection, and revenge are the perfect ingredients for an interesting and emotional plot. ReShonda Tate Billingsley proves once again why she is so well-respected within the literary community and why so many readers love her. Well done, ReShonda!

I was a little board with this book, it just didn't keep my interest. I read about halfway through.

A woman discovers that her “dead” mother actually abandoned her and the rest of the family years earlier and goes to find her. The questions that plague her, however, also cause her to neglect the other relationships in her life, and she comes to a life-altering moment that may make her lose everything. Author ReShonda Tate Billingsley tries to shape a compelling novel but instead misses the mark by a cavernous margin in the juvenile plot of Seeking Sarah.

Brooke Hayes knows what it’s like to lose someone she loves. The love of her life died in an accident, and her mother died when she was 7 years old. She even lost her dog a year ago. Her father and grandmother do all they can to help her, even this many years later, but Brooke still feels the emptiness left especially by her mother’s death.

When Brooke’s father goes into the hospital and then dies unexpectedly, Brooke doesn’t think she can hold herself together. How much more loss, she wonders, will she have to sustain? The question becomes irrelevant for her, though, when her grandmother reveals the most stunning news of all: Brooke’s mother, Sarah, didn’t die. She simply left the family.

As she tries to grapple with the fact, the new man in her life, Trent, announces he’s re-enlisting in the Navy. At one time Brooke thought she could see herself sharing a future with Trent, which included a civilian life and no more tours in the military. Now everything she knows for sure has spiraled out of control.

She decides that before she can explore a future with Trent, she has to find her mother and get the answers to questions that have left her longing for maternal affection. Brooke hires a private investigator who tracks her mother down in Atlanta, just hours away from Brooke’s home in Raleigh, NC. More shocking than the proximity is the news that Sarah remarried and has other children.

Incensed that the woman who gave birth to her has been so close for so many years and apparently living a happy life with a new family, Brooke drives straight to Atlanta to confront Sarah. There she meets Sarah’s children and then her new husband, and before Brooke knows it she finds herself in the most compromising situation of all. She has the power to destroy her mother’s life to get revenge; all she needs to decide is whether she’s going to go through with her plan.

Author ReShonda Tate Billingsley gets everything possible wrong with this story that an author can. Her main character, Brooke, evokes absolutely no sympathy whatsoever. Because the story is told in first person, readers get to know Brooke in the most intimate of ways. Her justifications to herself for her actions only weaken her argument. She sounds more like she’s trying convince herself that because her mother hurt her, she has carte blanche to do anything her whims might dictate for revenge. She does get that revenge, but it’s in the most immature way possible and only brings about more sorrow for everyone involved.

By the end of the book, readers will most likely wonder why they waited around for some possible redemption. Despite numerous opportunities for it, Billingsley never steps in and allows Brooke a gracious way out of a difficult situation. At one point, Brooke makes the observation that she’s in her mid-30s; her characterization makes her sound like a whiny teenager.

The other characters, too, lack any traits to make readers like them. Trent, Brooke’s love interest, comes across as self-centered and pig-headed. Brooke’s father doesn’t get a chance to offer any explanation whatsoever for why he and Sarah split, which makes him look almost unnecessary to the story. Sarah’s new husband will repel readers with his “creepiness” from their first interaction with him, and her stepson seems more disturbed than Brooke herself.

Most disappointing is Sarah. Billingsley doesn’t give her titular character a concrete reason for leaving Brooke. Readers will have a bevy of guesses before reading the book for why Sarah might have left. All of those guesses will be wrong. In truth, Sarah herself never manages to answer Brooke’s question of “Why” even though Brooke confronts her on numerous occasions. The best Sarah can manage is a shrug and a mumbled apology.

I recommend readers Bypass Seeking Sarah.

*I received this arc from Netgalley for an honest review.*

ReShonda Billingsley definitely kept me guessing with this one. I could have never predicted the outcome of this, as I so easily have with some other books I've read. I'm still in the process of letting the book sink in since it left me in a bit of a shock. It was incredibly well written and I'll definitely look for books from ReShonda in the future.

With a cast of unlikeable characters and a storyline that is unbelievable, this was a book I really didn't care for. Would someone ruin a bright future by seeking revenge for something that had happened in their past? Would they change their whole outlook in order to hurt someone else. Maybe, but I found this book to be sad and depressing watching the lengths someone would go to to destroy the life of someone else.

In Seeking Sarah, Brooke Green has been told since the age of seven that her mother is dead. While on his deathbed, her father keeps apologizing. once the dust settles, Brooke finds out from her Grandmother that her mother is in fact alive. Brooke hires a private detective and is able to find her mother. What happens next is a lot of intense drama.

I truly felt sorry for Brooke for the lies she was told, and what she does once she finds her mother. I couldn't relate to the character because I have a pretty good relationship with my mother, but I could feel her pain throughout the story. I enjoyed the story very much and thanks to Netgalley for the read.

There's a LOT of drama here. Not just secrets and lies but DRAMA with a capital D. I had a hard time finding someone to like in this novel of secrets, lies, and let's face it, revenge. Not Trent, not Tony, not Sarah, and frankly, not even Brooke. That said, it was a fast and highly entertaining read- I had a hard time turning away even as I totally disapproved of pretty much everything these people were doing to each other. Gosh! Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Recommend this if you like fast paced novels where you'll find yourself shaking your head at the characters and saying to yourself "oh no you don't".

Brooke discovers that her family wasn't what it seemed after the death of her father. She also finds that the mother she though was dead was very much not dead! Not only was Brooke's mother alive but she was only a few hours away living the dream. 
ReShonda takes us on what looks to be a journey of reuniting a mother daughter combo. But this trip isn't what it seems. Seeking Sarah was a dark tale of two women living different lives and how their lies and abuse turns into a journey of self destruction. 
I highly recommend this twisted dark tale of self discovery and self destruction. The book is FULL to the brim with drama you will have minor anxiety attacks as you are reading!

So this book definitely had potential but for me it didn’t quite hit the mark which is why I’m giving it 3.75 stars. I’ll start with perhaps my biggest bias; a book written in the first person has to be really, truly great in order for me to get over that. Unless the character is fascinating or incredibly intelligent I don’t really want to hear every mundane thought in their head and this one had more than a little.
I was intrigued though about the whole dead-not-dead-mom aspect of the story and this was where ReShonda Tate Billingsley really shone. I was glad to find out that the fake death wasn’t to do with the mob or her simply not wanting to be a mother. There were layers to Sarah reasons and honestly I don’t fault her at all for leaving, though I can find fault with leaving your child behind. I can even understand Brooke’s anger and dismay to find the parent who abandoned you now being the perfect mom to other kids.
But that’s about as far as my understanding goes. The rest of it kind of devolved into a Lifetime movie, of which I am not a fan. But like a Lifetime movie, there’s so much to like about the story that you read the whole thing anyway even though you know that no possible ending could satisfy you.
The story was well written and all the plot elements were there, I just didn’t connect to this story the way I had hoped to when I read the book description. I love a good revenge story but in this story I just wanted to shake Brooke and scream at her that revenge is supposed to destroy the other person…not you, girl!!!

Seeking Sarah is a story with many layers. Author ReShonda Tate Billingsley incorporates Love. Abandonment, Revenge, and Forgiveness in this compelling story. It follows protagonist/heroine, Brooke Green as she relentlessly seeks her mother, Sarah, after she learns that she did not die as Brooke was led to believe,. It is a journey that Brooke herself had to admit that she forfeited her future to try to reclaim her past. I highly recommend this story.