Anna and her mother live a strict and penitent life together and Anna is taught that virtue is the path to God. But on a clandestine visit to Florida’s biggest theme park everything seems familiar.  Rosie has grown up in the shadow of the missing sister she barely remembers, but now Rosie vows to uncover the truth.

Two girls who are joined by an invisible thread which works its way throughout the story.  The tale is familiar but well crafted and keeps the pages turning.  The dual narration of the book keeps it interesting even though the outcome is obvious very early.  The details are interesting enough to want to find out how the story leads to conclusion.

A fantastic read about ayoung girl brought up in rural America to a single mother with a very obssessive and devout Christian belief . Anna is 18 years old and has lived a very sheltered up bringing, her mother is fastidious about being clean to the point of scrubbing hands till they’re raw. But Anna is rebelling and in small ways one of which is visiting a forbidden amusement park called Astroland. At the same time we meet Rosie who’s 16 and living in London, all her life she’s had to grow up in the shadow of her older sister who disappeared on a trip to America whilst visiting an amusement park. Now it’s the fifteenth annivesary of her sister’s disappearance , R osie decides she’s going to find out the truth about her sister herself.
This is a fabulous psychological drama that kept me enthralled till the very end. I loved how every chapter was told in alternating voices of the two girls , each one revealing just a little more of the tale, each one keeping you wondering what could possibly happen next. An amazing debut novel by Lizzy Barber, can’t wait for her next .

This book had all the makings of a thriller which caused the heart to beat at a strange rhythm especially when I knew that things were reaching a point where secrets had to be revealed. 

A child Emily kidnapped from a ride in a theme park on a vacation to Florida, 15 years ahead, the family in London was still ravaged by the loss when Rosie the sister decided to get to the truth. Across the river in Florida, Anna lead a biblical life with a fanatic mother who was obsessed with cleanliness and dirt and germs to the point of cruelty. A routine life that was soon broken by memories.... 

The story was told in Anna and Rosie's POV by author Lizzy Barber. It was obvious from the very beginning where the story would go, but the reasons for the decisions were still unknown, and that captured my interest along with Lizzy's crisp and fast writing. 

My niggles had to be remarked on. There were a few subplots linked to a cult-like church which I skimmed over. And the story gave me a sense of deja vu. I have read similar stories before. 

Even with a predictable formulaic storyline, the fast pace kept me hooked to the book. Enjoyable.

What a gripping read! Told from both sister’s point of view, My Name is Anna tells the story of 2 girls growing up separate from each other.

On her 18th birthday Anna defies mama, a very strict and religious woman, and spends her birthday at Astroland, a local theme park. During the day Anna senses some déjà vu and is sure she has been there before…
Rosie lives in London, with her parents and her younger brother. Rosie grows up under the burden of her missing sister. Every year, on the anniversary of her sister’s missing, Rosie and her family appear on television for an interview in hopes of new clues as to her sister’s whereabouts.

Switching between the sisters in each chapter, the story unfolds. Anna’s living situation is well described, I could feel the claustrophobic tension within mama’s household. And I felt for Rosie, trying to do normal, typical teenager stuff, but who is always seen as ‘the sister of missing Emily’.

A well written book with a nice pace and build-up!

If you’re going to write a debut novel then this is how to do it! Lizzy Barber has created a real page turner which leaves you thinking on for a long time afterwards how it would feel to be Anna and find out your life was a lie. Told from both sides of the pond, Rosie in England and Anna in America, the girls were both likeable characters and you couldn’t help getting behind them. Anna was snatched from a Florida theme park aged 3 years and when Rosie was a baby. Rosie’s family went through anguish and pain every day while Anna thought her mum was her mum, until on her 18th birthday she visits the theme park her mum has always banned her from and bells start to ring. I will certainly be looking out for any future books from Lizzy and will be recommending this one to my book club members. Thank you Netgalley and Penguin Random House UK for my copy in return for my honest review..

Where is Emily?

The story centres around two sisters who really don't know each other; Rosie was just a toddler when her three year old sister disappeared from a Florida theme park. Rosie's family has been searching for her ever since and Rosie has lived constantly under the shadow of her perfect older sister. When the funding for the search dries up after 15 years, Rosie decides to see if she can unearth anything that others have missed, before she has to stand by and watch her mother disintegrate.

Meanwhile, Anna is living under the watchful eye of her overbearing, fanatical mother. 'Mamma' is obsessed with cleanliness and insists that Anna scrub her hands and arms in hot bleach to ward off the awful germs found outside the home. Anna is dating the vicar's son, hard for Mamma to object to that. When her date takes her behind her mother's back, to a large Florida theme park, Anna starts to have flashbacks of a place she's sure she's never been.

Anna and Rosie both go behind their parents' backs to try and get to the bottom of an unsolved mystery that has haunted the State for over a decade. Gradually we manage to piece together what happened on that fateful day, and why. It's a dark, disturbing tale.

This was an enjoyable read, a good start for 2019. It was fast paced and kept my attention to the end. It made me think about how an older sibling who is missing from a family, for whatever reason, affects the children under them and how it would never be possible to fully live up to these lofty expectations.

4.5 stars - but it would be churlish to round it down.

My Name is Anna is a novel that will grip you from its first pages; where you meet Anna, quietly frightened of her own Mother, known as Mamma, a fanatically clean, overly religious and quietly controlling woman.

On her Eighteenth birthday, Anna defies her Mother and visits Florida’s biggest and most popular theme park, Astroland with her boyfriend William. She knows that she has never been there before, for her Mother has forbidden it.

But Anna feels like everything there is familiar to her. Like she has somehow been there before ...

In the U.K., Rosie has grown up in the shadow of her missing older sister, Emily. The sister she can barely remember, but is forced to celebrate every anniversary in the media spotlight with her family in the hope that it will unearth a new piece of evidence that will bring her missing sister home.

Her sister, Emily has now been missing for fifteen years. And the money in the Emily Archer trust, funding the investigation into her disappearance is about to run out...

Rosie more than ever wishes that she could help to find her sister, as she knows that it is the only thing that will keep her fragile family from falling apart at the seams.

My Name is Anna deals with some difficult subjects brilliantly, and really makes you care about its characters. I know it's only January, but I truly think that this will be one of my favourites for 2019!

What’s in a name? 

For the main characters in Lizzy Barber’s novel, a name is everything. It defines you, your surroundings, your feelings, and your family. 

Anna and Rosie couldn’t be more different. 

Anna has been raised in a very religious setting, obeying her mother and her rules. Frail, with a kind heart torn between doing what’s right in her mother’s eyes and what any girl of eighteen would like to live, she feels stuck and guilty of it. The author did a perfect job at showing just how complicated feelings can be when you’ve only known so much, when doors appear, and when your world feels too close to the edge. 

Rosie. Forever in the shadow of her bigger sister, “the one who disappeared”. What does it feel to be left behind? To keep on living in the same place, with the same people, when something is missing? When someone is missing? I found Rosie very resilient. It takes a lot to go on a chase adults haven’t managed to finish, to take up where leads have dried, for the sake of your family. The ‘not-knowing’ is an underestimated torture. My heart beat for this family, for a happy ending I knew would never happen because we can’t rewind time, we can’t get lost days back. I was fully aware that Rosie’s plan to get her sister back came right from her heart but would not be an ending in itself. Indeed, what happens when you manage to find the missing person you’ve been dreaming of? Aren’t they just a stranger? The shadow of the person you expected? The fight doesn’t end when you get reunited… if you ever get the chance to be.  

Two faces of the same coin. Two nightmares. Different but linked by an invisible hand. This beautiful and heart-wrenching novel manages to keep both storylines engaging and gripping with alternate chapters taking you on roads you wish no one would have to walk on. My feelings were all over the place. What would I do if my sibling was gone? What would I say if I found out my life had been a lie? What, what, what. So many whats, no real answer! Because there can’t be a good answer. A single event triggered a series of explosions that left scars and not even time can repair those. How do you build your world when the foundations are shaky? 

Worse, what can you do when some people don’t want the truth to come out? Would you be ready to jeopardize the semblance of a normal life that you know? 

My Name Is Anna is a stunning piece about finding yourself, digging old truths, and religion. I was born and raised Catholic, now I believe in books. But do not worry about the R word. No preaching here. Just faith, and an amazingly chilling backdrop of religion gone bad. I can’t say more than this without spoiling the fun but bloggers like my friend Annie @TheMisstery91 would ADORE this book! Lizzy Barber takes a touchy subject and wraps her plot around it, framing her characters’ lives with a white veil that hold all the answers. It is brilliant, it is thought-provoking, it is awfully relevant. 

Anna… Oh Anna! I felt for her, I wanted to shake her, I wish I could have held her. Sweet Anna who tries not to drown in the blurry world that is hers. Choked by mixed feelings, hoping to see the light without making too many waves, she opens the Pandora box and there is no way back. Her journey is painful and bloody, messy and muddy. Her heart and soul have been marked forever. 

And bad people want to make sure things stay as they are. 

You get more than a character-driven book. My Name Is Anna is a steady-paced maze in which each action has consequences. The more you run for the escape, the darker the place becomes. Truly addictive and stunningly written, you can’t refuse this invitation to meet Anna…

I found myself enjoying this storyline. Very gruesome in a few places. I've not come across any books about religious cults before so was an interesting theme. I really couldn't put this down.  Sleep?  Can't go to sleep until I find out how it ends. Very good and I would recommend.

I enjoyed this book. Enjoyed the characters in the story although got a bit frustrated with them at times, In my head im going No don't go in there and they go in there towards danger. 
A good story, loved reading and finding out about what happened in the past to make Anna the way she was.

An intriguing thriller about two teenage girls, separated by an ocean, leading vastly different lives. Anna is an 18 year old growing up in Florida, being raised by her deeply religious single mother, whereas Rosie is in London, living with her parents and younger brother, but this existence is overshadowed by the disappearance of her older sister Emily at a theme park in Florida 15 years before. Both young women are searching for the truth, what happened that day 15 years ago. Who is behind Emily's disappearance? Who is the mysterious Father Paul? The story slowly unfolds to reveal it's secrets, and the answer, though not a great surprise, still leads us to a satisfying conclusion.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My name is Anna was my first book by this author and If I'm being honest I enjoyed the first half much more than the second.
Telling the story of the aftermath of a young girls abduction and the effect this has on the people impacted by these tragic events we pick up the story fifteen years after the fact.
Told from two sisters POV Anna/Emily currently residing with her Mama in the USA and Rosie younger sister of abducted Emily living with her mum dad and brother in the UK.
This is mainly the sister's story and as we switch seamlessly from girl to girl we start to get a sense of the differences that from the same instant in time have impacted both there lives so dramatically and while for the most part, I did enjoy this: It started to get slightly monotonous the further I progressed.
I just wasn't fully on board here and I'm not sure quite why that was.
It almost had a slightly anti-climactic feel to it especially the finale which for me felt a bit flat.
On a sidenote, I did enjoy the Carrie references included with Anna and noticed the parallels included here almost instantly.
This, in conclusion, was for me an OK read that never really took flight: hoping its a better fit for you.
I voluntary reviewed an Arc of My name is Anna.
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

A fabulous read  not my normal type of novel but was greatly surprised as I enjoyed it emensley from the first page to the last this book holds your interest and telling the story of a missing girl told supurbly by Emily (anna) and her sibling Rosie it is played out brilliantly a thoroughly enjoyable novel

Every one of us has probably experienced déjà vu at one time or the other, the feeling of having seen, heard or experienced something before. When Anna defies her mother and spends the day at a popular theme park she isn’t sure whether she is having a flashback or a feeling of déjà vu.

Just one problem with that, there is no way she could be having a flashback, because according to her very strict and religious mother, Anna has never been anywhere near the theme park. Anna starts to question whether what she knows is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Meanwhile a young girl called Rosie decides to look into the disappearance of her sister. The loss, grief and confusion has left her family broken. She believes that solving the mystery could be what finally brings her family back together. The not knowing, the unanswered questions and the imagined scenarios make a unexplained disappearance worse than a disappearance with a bad ending.

I really appreciated the realistic and honest approach to the ending of this book. Barber didn’t feel the need to romanticise it for her readers, and to be completely frank it’s exactly what it would be like for families in such a traumatic situation. So kudos to the author for that.

This may appear to be a simple premise but Barber takes it a step further and puts readers in a situation where the worst possible crime a family can deal with could be completely understandable given the traumatic and extraordinary circumstances. The predictable takes a sharp left turn and leads the reader on a merry chase up the garden path.

Wow what a read. I struggled to put it down. It is split into two Anna and Rosie. Anna lives in America with her Mamma living a god fearing life just the two of them. Rosie lives in London with her Mum and Dad and younger brother Rob. Rosie has an older sister Emily who was taken as a toddler while at a fun fair on holiday. You read the two stories of their lives side by side as each of them try’s to understand what’s going on. Rosie’s family hold a party for what would have been Emily’s 18th birthday and Rosie starts to look closer into what people have been putting on the internet all these years. Anna gets taken back to the same fun fair and starts to have flashes of another life.  A gripping read I recommend this book.

I liked My name is Anna, it is a novel told in alternate chapters, jumping between Rosie & Anna.
Rosie is the child of parents who have endured a parents worst nightmare, the kidnapping of their child. Emily, Emily was Rosie big sister who was taken 15 years before from an American theme park, whilst her English father’s back was turned. The family was suddenly plunged into a waking nightmare but  they have never given up trying to find her, but after 15 years of searching the trust fund is running dry and it looks unlikely they will ever find out what has happened to their daughter, where as Anna lives in America with her very religious & strict mother, she has had a very oppressive childhood life consists of School, church and keeping clean & trying to make her mother proud, definitely not an easy life, which she longs to escape & with her understanding boyfriend she might find a way.
My name is Anna, tackles a very difficult subject very well & doesn’t just head towards a happy ever after like some novels do. Definitely worth reading.

This book gave an account of how two lives on either side of the Atlantic were shaped by an event.  It looked into the nature vs nurture impact on people.  I enjoyed it and it was an easy read.

Fantastic read. Gripping after each chapter. 

A girl is abducted from Astroland in Florida. The story follows her discovery and her sisters aim to find her missing sister. 

Thoroughly enjoyed this book!

This is a story of Anna, who grows up in the USA and Rosie, who grows up in the U.K.  This was an intensive read as I quickly became engrossed in the different upbringings of the two girls. The ending was predictable but this did not detract from the beauty of the book. 
The story brings the emotions that the family of an abducted child goes through as well as some of the issues that religious sects can produce., both these topics were very well addressed throughout. The book has alternate chapters for each girl showing their lives so clearly from Rosie’s overprotective mother to Anna’s strict religious upbringing. I fell in love with the both girls but found the ending tear jerking as it describes so clearly the emotions that Anna has to go through to try to be Emily. 
A beautiful written book that I highly recommend to all.

Bit too predictable and a few too many coincidences. Also left a few too many unanswered questions at the end