Find You First: A Novel
The New
York Times bestselling author of Elevator Pitch and master of
psychological suspense returns with a riveting thriller in which the possible
heirs of a dying tech millionaire are mysteriously being eliminated, one by
one.
“Find You First starts with a bang and ends with
an even bigger one. . . . It’s the best book of his career.” — Stephen
King
Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has
more money than he can ever spend, and everything he could dream of—except
time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there
is a fifty percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For
Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past . . .
Two
decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there,
he has kids—nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and
the bad from him—maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse.
As
Miles begins to search for the children he’s never known, aspiring film
documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father,
armed with the knowledge that twenty-two years ago, her mother used a New York
sperm bank to become pregnant.
When
Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is
overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Miles’s
other potential heirs are vanishing—every trace of them wiped, like they never
existed at all.
Who
is the vicious killer—another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something
even more sinister going on?
It’s
a deadly race against time . . .
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Community Reviews
This is the Crime, Mystery, Thriller February group read. It’s also been on my to-read list since May2023, so it’s also a part of my 2026 cleaning out the to-read closet challenge. Kind of a challenge twofer. This is the second Linwood Barclay book I’ve read and much better than the first, Elevator Pitch, that was only a 2star read for me.
The book summary pretty much lays out the whole book. It’s kind of annoying when a book summary does that and really gives away too much info. Anyway, Miles is dying of Huntington’s and knowing that the disease is inherited, he wants all of his biological relatives to get tested starting with his brother. Miles then starts thinking about any possible children that resulted from his donation to a sperm bank more than 20yrs ago. He gets a list of recipients of his donation along with the list of children resulting from those donations; there are nine. Chloe is the first one he meets. I liked Chloe – a lot. She doesn’t give a crap about Miles’s money, and she doesn’t want to know if she has the Huntington’s gene. However, she would like to meet any half siblings, that she affectionately refers to as “the nine”, and decides to accompany Miles on his search for his other children.
It’s not long before Miles and Chloe find out that some of the other nine are suddenly being reported as missing or dying, and they begin to suspect that it has something to do with Miles’s diagnosis and his plans to leave his estate to his nine biological kids. They wonder if “another heir is methodically erasing rivals” as stated in the book summary. However, there is another storyline that actually has me thinking there “is something even more sinister going on” as stated in the book summary. I’m not going to mention what the other storyline is because that would be a spoiler and the book summary already provided enough spoilers.
By the halfway point, I’ve narrowed down the killer(s) to three different characters, but I am really leaning more toward one particular character than the other two. The whole jealous heir angle just seems too obvious, and at that point, I’m really hoping that Barclay is more creative than that. He was and I was right about the killer(s). It was still a good story though and I enjoyed it.
The character development for the MC’s Miles and Chloe was well done along with a few other characters like Nikki. The pacing was steady to fast, especially in the second half when the storylines collided. The storyline and writing were engaging and kept me engrossed in the story. I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review.
The book summary pretty much lays out the whole book. It’s kind of annoying when a book summary does that and really gives away too much info. Anyway, Miles is dying of Huntington’s and knowing that the disease is inherited, he wants all of his biological relatives to get tested starting with his brother. Miles then starts thinking about any possible children that resulted from his donation to a sperm bank more than 20yrs ago. He gets a list of recipients of his donation along with the list of children resulting from those donations; there are nine. Chloe is the first one he meets. I liked Chloe – a lot. She doesn’t give a crap about Miles’s money, and she doesn’t want to know if she has the Huntington’s gene. However, she would like to meet any half siblings, that she affectionately refers to as “the nine”, and decides to accompany Miles on his search for his other children.
It’s not long before Miles and Chloe find out that some of the other nine are suddenly being reported as missing or dying, and they begin to suspect that it has something to do with Miles’s diagnosis and his plans to leave his estate to his nine biological kids. They wonder if “another heir is methodically erasing rivals” as stated in the book summary. However, there is another storyline that actually has me thinking there “is something even more sinister going on” as stated in the book summary. I’m not going to mention what the other storyline is because that would be a spoiler and the book summary already provided enough spoilers.
By the halfway point, I’ve narrowed down the killer(s) to three different characters, but I am really leaning more toward one particular character than the other two. The whole jealous heir angle just seems too obvious, and at that point, I’m really hoping that Barclay is more creative than that. He was and I was right about the killer(s). It was still a good story though and I enjoyed it.
The character development for the MC’s Miles and Chloe was well done along with a few other characters like Nikki. The pacing was steady to fast, especially in the second half when the storylines collided. The storyline and writing were engaging and kept me engrossed in the story. I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review.
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