Motherhood is one of the themes In Lyn Liao Butler’s newest thriller, “What is Mine.” She demonstrates that motherhood, the quality of being a loving and caring mother—or not—does not pass from one generation to the next. Hope Chen and her sister Cassidy had parents who were cold and unfeeling. Yet Cassidy is, to the best of her ability, a caring mother to Luca. When Cassidy dies, Hope and her husband Shaun take Luca into their home and are determined to provide him with all the love and protection they can.

So when he disappears two months after arriving at their home, they are frantic. One minute he was playing basketball in the driveway, with their newly adopted foster dog Mochi in the backyard, and then both boy and dog were gone. Hope was inside making dinner, mapo tofu, a very spicy Chinese dish that Luca had requested, when she realized that she no longer was hearing the bounce of the basketball. She searched outside and inside the house, and after looking in the neighborhood, she and her husband called the police.

Luca is not quickly found. And the first half of the book details those frantic days when Hope does not know what has happened to her nephew. We learn more about her sister Cassidy and Cassidy’s struggle with drugs. We learn how Cassidy was determined to get off drugs when she realized she was pregnant with Luca, and how she stayed with Hope and Shaun until she abruptly disappeared with Luca and would not contact Hope again. We feel Hope’s anguish as she berates herself for not being a good enough sister to Cassidy that Cassidy wouldn’t call her when she was in need.

During his time with Hope and Shaun, Luca had shared that he and his mother traveled around the country, sometimes sleeping in Cassidy’s car, camping outside at times, and, when Cassidy needed to get into rehab, staying with a friend of Cassidy’s. Hope searches through Luca’s belongings to try to see where he might have gone. It’s confusing because if he had planned to leave, he would have taken the harness and leash for his beloved dog Mochi. In fact, when Luca arrived at Hope and Shaun’s house, Hope had two foster dogs, Shadow and Mochi, and the two dogs were very close. Luca fell in love with those dogs, and when Shadow got adopted, he was very upset. So they agreed to adopt Mochi (called a “foster fail”) so he could be Luca’s dog. Luca and Mochi were inseparable.

In that first part of the story, Hope receives a phone call from Luca, and she realizes what has happened. But we learn in the second part of the novel, in the first person narrative of another woman, why Luca was kidnapped. The reason for the first person narrative in the second part doesn’t really become apparent until the end of the story. Butler provides several clues that this might be an unreliable narrator as there are references to events that are not explained, and we get a feeling that something beyond the obvious—the kidnapping—is not right.

The third part of the story features alternating chapters from Hope’s and the other woman’s point of view, sharing more details about the past months, what exactly has happened, and providing us with twist after twist in this clever tale of motherhood that is not exactly about mothers, but rather about what women will do in the name of motherhood. One doesn’t necessarily need to be a biological mother to feel possessive, even fiercely protective, of a child. Sometimes that feeling is healthy and encouraged, but as we see in this thriller, sometimes that feeling is far from normal.

This is a novel that at heart is about family. Hope desperately missed her sister and welcomed Luca into her family. Luca eagerly embraced his new family, including the beloved dogs who became his companions and siblings rolled into one. While both Hope and Luca missed Cassidy horribly, they were building a new family together. But Butler also shows us the other, dark side of loss. Another woman will do anything to ensure that her illusion of a perfect family is safe, even if it means kidnapping Luca. How will Hope keep her family safe?

This story touches on many of society’s problems that are carefully swept under the rug all too often: drug addiction, mental health issues, poverty, lack of support for single mothers, and lack of services for those who live paycheck to paycheck. Butler creates a main character, Hope, who in some ways reflects the author. Like Butler, Hope is of Asian heritage and has a background in fitness. Like Butler, Hope loves dogs and fosters them so they are safe until they find a permanent loving home. And like Butler, Hope has a sweet and loving dog named Mochi. In fact, the Mochi in this novel is an homage to the real Mochi, who was adopted by Butler and her family and lived a wonderfully happy, safe life with them until his recent passing. Mochi lives on forever in this story, loved by a boy in these pages as the real Mochi was loved by Butler’s own son.

This is a quick read because we want to know what happened to Luca, and Butler cunningly creates a nonstop series of events which keeps us turning the pages to see which of the red herrings she tosses out will lead to Luca and the mystery of who took him and why.

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.