The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas
Published by Penguin, Michael Joseph
Publication Date: 15th September 2022
Book Description:
Three girls missing...
Twenty years ago: One rainy night, Olivia Rutherford is driving three friends home when a figure in the road causes her to swerve and crash. Regaining consciousness, she finds herself alone in the car - her friends have vanished.
They are never seen again...
Now: Journalist Jenna Halliday visits the close-knit community of Stafferbury to persuade Olivia to talk and solve the mystery of the girls' disappearance. But Olivia won't speak.
What happened?
Is Olivia hiding something?
Why are the people of Stafferbury so frightened?
How many secrets can one small town hide?
The first thing to say about this book is that it's definitely a book of two halves; the first part is a slow burner, setting the scene of the town of Stafferbury with its mysterious goings-on and local myths. I recommend you bear with this slower part of the book in order to get to the action. Olivia has lived here her entire life, a life which was irrevocably changed one night not long after she passed her driving test and was taking her friends home after a night out partying. The survivors guilt she suffers from is due to the fact that every one of the people in the car with her that night vanished. There has been no sign of them ever since. Some of the locals don't believe that when she came round after losing consciousness her friends had gone; surely she knows something?
Journalist Jenna Halliday has been tasked with creating a podcast to try to discover more about what happened that night, where the missing girls could possibly have gone. But Olivia's not talking - she has never given any interviews to the media regarding the tragic events of that night. The more Jenna digs into the small community, the more closed it seems to become. But there are a few people who are willing speak out, sufficiently so that Jenna's interest is piqued by some of the suggestions they come up with. Then the threats to Jenna start: leave the past where it belongs. But who is making the threats? What happened back then which needs to remain hidden?
Also thrown into the mix, and the chapters which didn't seem to fit anywhere, is a trip to Thailand for a group of young friends: all of them are pretty skint, but one of them has a contact in Thailand who has offered the use of a plush villa if they can afford the flights there and back. These chapters threw me completely. None of the names linked with the Stafferbury story...so what is the relevance?
There's a definite small-town feel to this book, and certain points in the story gave me that feeling of when you walk into a pub in an area unknown to you and the entire place goes silent, with everyone inside turning to look at the stranger who dares to encroach on the locals' favoured drinking hole. The whole atmosphere is very shifty and outsiders are not welcomed in. Too many secrets over too many years. That said though, the whole house of cards which has been standing since the night of Olivia's accident very quickly starts to shake on its foundations once Jenna is in town and the truth begins to come out. My main criticism of this book is that the majority of the reveal comes in one huge information dump which I found quite overwhelming after the pace of the previous chapters. Some of the facts I had sketchily worked out, other parts were still quite surprising. Because of the structure of this book I'm not sure everyone will be patient enough to get to the reveal - it's not a format for everyone. If you want quick-fire action, you're not reading the right book.
My daughter and I picked this as a buddy-read and I'm really glad we opted for this one, as the pace worked well for us discussing all the possible directions the story could go. Whether it would work on a larger scale as a book club read, I'm not so sure. Don't let me put you off reading this one though, if you have a buddy to read it with, I would certainly recommend it. Otherwise I'd say be prepared for the slow-paced start.
About the Author:
Claire Douglas always wanted to write novels and, after many years of trying to get published, her dream came true when she won the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award in 2013 with THE SISTERS.
Her second and third novels, LOCAL GIRL MISSING and LAST SEEN ALIVE, are Sunday Times bestsellers.
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