Two children disappear from a playground during recess, and are later found in the nearby woods. Amelia has been murdered, and although it is assumed that 9-year-old Adam witnessed the crime, he is autistic and not able to easily or clearly communicate what he might have seen.
Adam's mother, Cara, is better able to communicate with Adam than anyone else, and when another child goes missing, Cara realizes that it's up to her to make sense of what little Adam has said about what happened in the woods.
There is much to like in Eye Contact, especially in the first half of the book -- believable characters, an interesting mystery, crisp prose -- but it all gets buried under the weight of too much illness. Nearly everyone in this book either has some sort of mental or emotional disorder -- there's autism, agoraphobia, post-traumatic brain damage -- or is coping with the difficulties of being a caretaker for such a person.
And as the mystery of what happened to Adam and Amelia is gradually explained, it begins to feel as if every character in the book trekked through those woods during the crucial half-hour. The coincidences pile onto another far too rapidly to be credible, and the resolution of the mystery isn't nearly as satisfying as the setup had been.
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