The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean ia a police procedural with dark suspense elements. I am a longtime fan of the author’s YA books. This one was a little bit too creepy for me, but maybe you will enjoy it. Let’s find out! This review includes protected Spoilers for The Return of Ellie Black!

Jen’s Quick Analysis of The Return of Ellie Black

Original photo of a copy of The Return of Ellie Black on a bookshelf with a succulent plant.

An Elizabeth Smart-type abduction story
Police procedural and dark suspense elements, but is it really a true procedural?
Told in the third person from the POV of several different narrators.
Content warning for dark themes like child/sexual abuse (feel free to email or IG message me any time with content questions!)
High Goodreads rating, so don’t hesitate if you are okay with the dark themes
Kudos to whomever did this cover; love the inclusion of the Queen Anne’s lace which is an important aspect of the story!

Overview of The Return of Ellie Black

Published on May 7, 2024 by Simon & Schuster
320 pages
Thanks to the publisher for providing a free review copy which I accepted under FTC guidelines

My Review of the Return of Ellie Black

The Return of Ellie Black had a lot of elements I love in a book.

Detective Chelsey Calhoun is a police officer in a small Washington state town. She’s one of the few females in her department. She’s of Japanese descent, and was adopted by a white family that included a police officer father. Twenty years ago, her older sister Lydia died as part of a murder-suicide carried out by Lydia’s boyfriend.

When Chelsey gets a call that some hikers stumbled upon Ellie Black, a girl who vanished two years before, she’s incredulous. She rushes to the scene and yes, this girl IS Ellie. Badly traumatized, she refuses to talk about where she has been or what happened to her.

Just last month, I read and reviewed a similar YA book, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, about a missing woman who reappeared. My Spoiler Discussion for that book is here.

The big mystery in this book is why Ellie won’t reveal anything about what happened

Of course, this isn’t uncommon among trauma victims, but the book suggests there’s something more. And the mystery behind that kept me reading, even though the book was pretty dark.

The Return of Ellie Black did have one great twist. But the motivation behind what happened to Ellie got a little too convoluted for my procedural-loving brain. (My test for this is if I explain the ending to a person who hasn’t read the book, and they laugh or stop listening, it’s convoluted.)

I remain a huge fan of the author, though, and you can find others of her books below. After that, I’ll add some protected spoilers.

More Books by Emiko Jean

Emiko Jean is a seriously versatile author who has written a YA fantasy novel, Empress of All Seasons, a YA romance series (The Tokyo Ever After series); an adult romance, Mika in Real Life; a YA psychological suspense book, We’ll Never Be Apart, and now this book. Something for everyone!

On my YA blog I have a post with reviews of all her books!

Spoilers for the Return of Ellie Black

To protect readers who HATE being spoiled you will need to enter your email. By doing so, you will be added to my email list and receive awesome weekly updates about new books! For more information on why I protect my spoilers, please read this post! If you are having any issues PLEASE leave a comment as I want to help!

So, the abductors of Ellie Black were Doug and West Abbott, sons of Sergeant Abbott, Chelsey’s commanding officer.

The Abbott boys are angry at their mother, Regina, who left the family and then became governor. This drove their father into alcoholism. (Of COURSE it’s the mom’s fault!)

The first twist is that their first victim was Lydia Calhoun, Chelsey’s “dead” sister. The authorities were never able to find Lydia’s body (always a red flag in a book!) and the kidnappers staged her kidnapping as a murder-suicide and put the blame on her boyfriend.

Lydia seems to have been colluding with the kidnappers, though this could be trauma or Stockholm Syndrome.

Through some crack detective work, Chelsey is able to locate the compound where the brothers are still holding several missing girls and women.

The second twist was that Doug Abbott released Ellie on the condition that she would murder his mother (the governor). He told Ellie that if she did that, he’d release Grace, another captive that Ellie bonded deeply with. He gives Ellie a bomb and tells her to bury it in the woods until she’s ready to use it.

Ellie does try to bomb the governor’s mansion, but flees after someone recognizes her. Chelsey tracks Ellie back to the compound and arrests her captors.

For quite a while this book gave me cult vibes. The captors gave their victims names like Charity and Hope and used mind control/brainwashing techniques on them. By the ending it went in a bit of a different direction with the mother revenge plot.

Have you read this? Do you have questions? Please leave a comment! Spoilers are fine!