Is ‘I Will Find You’ based on a true story?
If you love a twisted mystery thriller that leaves you guessing throughout, I Will Find You on Netflix truly delivers in spades.
The gritty Netflix series follows devoted father David Burroughs, wrongfully convicted for murdering his own son, and currently serving a life sentence, who finds proof that his son could be alive after all this time, thanks to his ex-sister-in-law, Rachel Mills, who brings evidence in the form of a picture of a young child with the same birthmark as David’s son, Matthew.
Desperate to find out the truth for himself, David is forced to break out of prison and track down Matthew, all while navigating the ghosts of his past, ingrained corruption, and a deep-seated conspiracy that will push you to read between the lines. In fact, I Will Find You perfectly fits the bill of thrillers that make you question anything and everything on screen.
While such an appeal is largely exemptive of shows that have real-life inspirations, does that mean that the Netflix series is also based on a true story? Well, not really! Although the twists and turns of I Will Find You come across as super real, that’s mostly thanks to the source material.
I Will Find You on Netflix adapts Harlan Coben’s 2023 novel, a #1 New York Times bestselling book. According to the official synopsis, the book follows “an innocent father serving life for the murder of his own son [who] receives evidence that his child may still be alive, and must break out of prison to find out the truth.”
If you are already aware but still hesitant to hit the play button because you haven’t read the book, don’t worry. I Will Find You on Netflix is a limited series with a self-contained story. So, even if you’ve not read the novel, it’s not a sin. If anything, that saves an element of surprise for you.
Surely, the adaptation is not without Coben’s hallmarks, which inject a DNA of authenticity in I Will Find You. But if the lack of prior knowledge about the source material is the only thing holding you back, you might want to reconsider.
In fact, Logan Browning, who stars in the Netflix series, revealed in an interview with DECIDER that she chose not to read Coben’s novel during production. “I didn’t read the book, because everyone kept saying that my character was so different from the book. Maybe now I’ll do it. But I really wanted to honour what was on the page in front of me.”