The novel I’m recommending this week has a story of its own. It was read by someone who did an internship with me and fell in love with this book. She highly recommended it and we decided to go for it. As soon as I read the novel, I knew there was something charming in it. Something books either have or don’t, and this literary thriller has something special, because Javier Arias has that gift of writing beautifully but with the right tension to keep you trapped in a plot where mystery and nostalgia come together. The cocktail is a perfect and good-measured book that will reach a large audience. Moreover, it has behind a great publisher like Leo Teti and the Umbriel imprint.

In 1982, when he was just three years old, Samir was abandoned by his mother on the beach of El Saler. She blindfolded him and told him: “Don’t move, I’ll be right back”. But she never did. No one knew why she did not return, and the boy ended up in a juvenile center with no other identity than his name and a handful of memories. Samir grew up among orphans and the disinherited of the world, but with the determination to have a chance in life. Thirty years after his mother forgot him on that beach, Samir is no longer a helpless child but captain in the Judicial Police of Valencia. However, his past will mysteriously come back to haunt him. The discovery of the body of a young woman, murdered hours earlier in the same spot where he had been abandoned as a child, does not seem to be a coincidence. The fact that she had his name and phone number on it is no coincidence either. Captain Santos will start an investigation that will turn into a puzzle where the lost pieces of his and his mother’s past will end up being fundamental to discover the truth about that corpse. After all, deep down, Samir had always hoped that someday his mother would come back to look for him. Narrated with brilliance and emotion, the suspense and the plot become the best attraction to read this book. The author builds the story, alternating past and present in a fluid and rhythmic way, knowing that a novel not requires only a good story, but powerful writing as well.