This book was really good. Completely unsettling. Made me nauseous even thinking about this happening in my life. The first half was truly heartbreaking. This book was so well written and really you felt like you were there. My flaw with the book was it just was a bit too long and I felt like full pages could be skipped. Overall, a great read!

Accidentally watched the movie first. I didn’t love the movie, and I didn’t love the book either.

Really good book for the most part, there were a few parts that confused me, and there were some parts of the plot that I wished had been written differently. (SPOILERS TO FOLLOW): I'm still confused about the role of the old "psychic" woman that Candy and Beth went to see. When she described what Beth thought sounded like a casket and Candy reassured her that it wasn't, the book never told what it actually was that the lady was seeing. I felt like that whole bit of going to see the psychic was a pointless part of the story. I kept waiting for that character to come back in the story in a meaningful way, but she was never mentioned again. Another pointless part to me was in the middle of the book when Vincent and his father were leaving home and Vincent ran back inside to set all the alarm clocks in the house for various hours during the night. I kept waiting to see what the reason was, and it never came (Unless I totally missed it).

The Deep End of the Ocean is the story of a three-year old boy, Ben, who is kidnapped. His mother, Beth, wanders then in a self-centered haze. Nine years later, however, Ben is found again-this time as Sam Taylor, mowing Beth's lawn.
The real problem for me with this book is that some parts of the first part drag on for far too long. We already know about Beth's main characteristics and flaws as they are demonstrated in the first few chapters. Mitchard goes on too much about this and it can get fairly boring in parts. However, in the second part of the book, you really start to see a dysfunctional family breaking down slowly, and it is quite interesting to see the different reactions characters have to this (e.g. the older child becomes 'bad' i.e. rebels, the mother becomes increasingly self-absorbed, and the father becomes a workaholic).
However, a fair warning would be that this book contains, from the start, no happiness. Happiness does not exist in Beth's world. It is a story of how a family can survive but die in spirit. The story is left unfinished, with a trailing end, and we never quite know what will happen next.
Read the full review at http://areviewsworld.blogspot.com/201....

An example of family dynamics after a tragedy. The middle son was kidnapped, while on a trip with his mother. The older brother, all of seven years old, was supposed to hang on to his three year old brother. One can imagine how that works out. The boy was not kidnapped for awful reasons; but by an unstable woman that had lost a baby. The book relates very well how the mother dealt with the loss, and how her doing so reflected on family relationships. Less about the father’s feelings. We get the mother/wife’s interpretation of his feelings, from his actions. The son turns up after nine years. What family does the boy belong to? The family he doesn’t know, but was born into. The man, who is his adopted father, who had no idea the boy was not his wife’s real son. That woman is in an institution, with little hope of regaining her sanity. The man is the family he has known all his life. At the end, he is with his blood family. This one is #1 of a series, so does he stay with them?

okay, it says here the book was published in 1995. i havent read it until now, so maybe i was like 17 years old late realize there is a book like this.

well, the story focused on a mom with three kids, beth, as she heading for her reunion in a hotel. she brought her three kids along with her, the oldest boy named vincent, the middle dude named ben, and the youngest of all.. i dont remember her name. beth life was going to turned upside down when she left a while to talk to her friends and leaving vincent in charge of keeping ben. but you see, vincent was a 5 years old kid, so he must have been bored his self out to just sit tight and watched her younger brother. he said to ben to get lost. and he did. he never came back, never came home, making vincent blaming himself for his disappearing, making vincent stepped into the role of a mother for her little sister while beth was in a depression.
but 12 years later when the family have pulled together and have a new life, came this boy living two blocks away from their house and willing to do a lawn mower for them. from the moment on beth has a hunched that the boy might be her long lost son.

the story is kind of promising actually, despite the fact that it was coincident that made ben united with his family again. but there is something about this story, about how valuable the means of family is, about how hard beth trying to safe her family when it started to slip out of her hands, about how deep a mother's love she even willing to take you to a stranger house you called dad at night when the real dad and the real mom is someone you might call a kidnapper. i aint gonna talk no more, you shank should read it or see the movie. goodreads and goodwatch buds! (i watched the film anyway, but i dont know if there is any difference between the book and the movie)

I thought this book was true but apparently it is fiction. It was really good. The mom made me crazy. She was so messed up and a horrible mother but I think she did the best she could with what she was dealt. But I thought she wasn't that great of a mother before she lost her son and even when she got her son back. Anyway, I just can't believe people can write like Mitchard wrote this book. I don't know how people come up with this stuff. I can't explain what I'm trying to say but the way she wrote about the mom, the detective and Reece/Vincent. The book ended too soon. I wanted to hear more and more and more and make sure Ben turned out o.k. and see if they stayed married. I loved when Pat stood up to Beth and told her she just liked being miserable. He was so right but how does an author develop a character like that and make it so believable. Beware there were lots of swear words but it was really good.

(Read years ago and apparently didn’t mark it as such.)

This is a great suspense novel that I really got into... it's about a mother who turns her back for a few minutes at a class reunion and loses her 3 year old boy. Turns out he was kidnapped and there are all kinds of repercussions from this one isolated incident. It's a heart-wrenching story that any mother would require tissues to read! However, after I got into the plot I was upset that the author decided to include a little TMI with some sex "scenes" between the mother & father, etc. I plunged through it though and enjoyed the book as a whole- even though I would have preferred to not have those included [a warning to those of you thinking about reading this book:].

I'm not quite sure how this book ended up on my "want to read" list, but I ordered it from the library nonetheless. After the first few chapters, I began to wonder why anyone would write a book about such a terrible occurrence, but justified it by thinking of all the other dramatic and tragic novels there are out there.
*Spoilers ahead*
About two-thirds of the way through, I questioned again, "Why would anyone write this!?" not only because it's depressing, but it's also completely and utterly predictable. There's no other way to carry on a book for 400 pages about a missing child if it doesn't come back! And why on earth would a kid who has grown up in a different home be "happy" to return to his biological family?
I know I'm jaded and cynical, but I cannot fathom how this one made it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for any amount of time.

Incredible book - heartbreaking, beautiful as it tackles a child’s ethnic duality as well as family identity. Underlining feminine empowerment and a woman’s place in the family.

This book is an emotional story, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The premise of a missing child and the impact it has on a family is compelling, but the pacing was too slow, and the plot didn’t fully engage me. While the characters are well-developed, I struggled to connect with them, and at times, the story felt repetitive. The book touches on deep themes, but I felt the execution could have been stronger. It was an okay read, but not as gripping or impactful as I had hoped.