Review by New York Times Review
Why is the title of Douglas's new novel so tantalizing? It's reminiscent of the sort of headline you might pursue when you're in an unfamiliar place with time to lounge around, vaguely but idly curious. In other words, when you're on vacation. Douglas takes wonderful advantage of that spark of interest, setting her book in a small coastal town in Somerset, England - but during the winter, a spooky, gray, empty season. Frankie, whose parents once owned a hotel there, is lured back when she learns that human remains have recently washed ashore. It's assumed they belong to Sophie, once her best friend, who disappeared 18 years earlier. And Sophie's brother, now the editor of the local paper, wants Frankie to help figure out what happened. Frankie's rented apartment overlooks the decaying pier where Sophie was last seen. Even back then it had been an abandoned and dangerous relic, a fit setting for the town's ghost stories. Years earlier, a woman was said to have committed suicide there, jumping into the sea with her newborn child after her husband left her. Now Frankie thinks she may have caught a glimpse of Sophie standing on the pier. Frankie receives anonymous notes ("I Know What You've Done," "Murderer," "I'm Watching You"). She keeps hearing the cries of a baby. Secrets hide behind secrets as Douglas slowly peels back the layers during Frankie's tense, difficult conversations with various people from her past. Although the transformations in her relationship with Sophie are carefully delineated, the local men Frankie is interested in seem interchangeable: all hot and raw. (So different, Frankie thinks, from the metrosexuals she dated in London.) But such occasional confusions shouldn't be held against Douglas, who must leave her characters somewhat shadowy in order to avoid giving too much away. And too much detail would interfere with the fast pace of her storytelling. "Local Girl Missing" has a supple, twisty shape and a sense of menace that never flags. Jacqueline carey is the author ofthe novels "The Crossley Baby" and "It's a Crime." She writes mystery stories under the name Jay Carey.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 27, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Eighteen years after Sophie Collier goes missing, her remains wash up on a beach. So Daniel Collier asks his sister's closest childhood friend, Francesca Frankie Howe, to return to Oldcliffe-on-Sea, the town where they grew up, to help discover what happened to Sophie just before she disappeared. Passages from Sophie's 1997 journal alternate with Frankie's modern-day, first-person accounts, as she somewhat reluctantly leaves her family's thriving hotel business in London, where her beloved father has just suffered a serious stroke. Staying in an off-season rental in Oldcliffe, Frankie begins talking to Sophie, as she thinks she sees her ghost; then nighttime baby's cries and threatening notes begin to disturb both her sleeping and waking hours. Girls going missing is becoming the theme du jour in thriller and psychological fiction, and Douglas (The Sisters, 2016) puts her own spin on it. But although suspense builds to a certain level, the oddly flat resolution is likely to leave readers partially satisfied and partially annoyed.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sophie Collier, the victim in British author Douglas's absorbing second novel (after 2016's The Sisters), vanished from a decrepit pier at Oldcliffe-on-Sea in 1997 at age 21 and is presumed dead. In 2016, Sophie's brother, Daniel, calls her best friend, Francesca "Frankie" Howe Bloom-now a successful hotelier in London-and says his sister's remains have been discovered. Suspecting murder, he persuades Frankie, despite her initial reluctance, to return to Oldcliffe and help him reconstruct Sophie's last night, when she fled from a local nightclub after a fight with her boyfriend. Back in the seaside town, Frankie becomes increasingly fearful when she keeps seeing a woman who resembles Sophie and comes across notes referencing a dark secret the two friends once shared. The suspense grows as Frankie in the present and Sophie in the past alternate sometimes conflicting first-person narratives. Only a problematic portrayal of mental illness undercuts this atmospheric, twist-filled thriller. Agent: Juliet Mushens, Agency Group (U.K.). (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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