Local Girl Missing

Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas is a recommended mystery about the past catching up with the present.

Sophie Collier disappeared in 1997, eighteen years ago, off the old, decaying pier at Oldcliffe-on-Sea. Her body was never found, but she did leave one of her shoes behind. Her best friend Frankie Howe (now Francesca Bloom) and her brother Daniel talked to the police at the time but no one could piece together what happened and why Sophie was on the pier that night. Now a foot that survived intact covered by a shoe has washed up on shore and is thought to be Sophie's remains. Daniel calls Frankie, who is now living in London, to come back to Oldcliffe while the remains are identified and to help him try to piece together again what happened that night. He believes this will give them both closure.

Daniel arranges a rental apartment that overlooks the pier, which Frankie finds disturbing. He wants Frankie to go with him to talk to some of the people who were at the nightclub the night Sophie disappeared. Did Sophie have a fight with her boyfriend or was she meeting someone else? He is hoping that someone saw something or is willing to provide new information after all these years.

Frankie is unsettled by the rental where it seems that someone is entering it when she is gone and she is losing sleep because a baby is crying in one of the units nightly. The rental is always cold; the fire is hard-pressed to stay lit and it is the middle of winter. Even more disturbing is that Frankie seems to be seeing Sophie's ghost and someone is leaving threatening notes at her doorstep.

The narrative alternates from Frankie's point of view in the present to Sophie's from the past, in 1997. The information in the two narratives don't always correspond to each other. The two share a big secret, but Sophie has many things she hasn't shared with Frankie, and Frankie has also kept some things secret from Sophie. It is apparent that there is more going on than we realize and that Frankie might not be the most reliable narrator.

This is a secret-laden novel where more is going on and has happened than meets the eye. The writing was good. There are some twists you will easily guess or suspect and perhaps one you won't. For a successful business woman, Frankie seems a little too easily rattled, needy, and over emotional. She's also missing the effervescent sparkling personality she is reputed to have and comes across as whiny. Douglas gives us the creepy feeling that everyone in town knows that Frankie is back, but never makes excellent use of this feeling once she establishes it. This is a satisfying novel and the ending is good, if not totally believable. This is a good choice for a summer beach read by an old pier, especially if there are plenty of drunk twenty-somethings hanging out on it.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
on 7/13/17 http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/ ( )

It's no surprise that psychological suspense if one of my favourite genres! So Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas sounded like it was perfect for my next hammock read!

Frankie Howe left the village of Oldcliffe-on-Sea almost twenty years ago. That's when her best friend Sophie disappeared, with no trace ever found. But with the news of a body located that may be her, she reluctantly heads back at the request of Sophie's brother.

Oh, Frankie is a mercurial, unreliable (and unlikable) narrator. Are her memories accurate or has time blurred the sharp edges? Frankie often (and rapidly) changes her opinion on people and events in present day. We learn about her take on the past through her internal conversations with the long gone Sophie. "Because the truth is bound to come out, Soph, and with it the dark secret we kept back then; the one thing we could never tell anyone else. Ever." But Sophie also has a voice - through her journal entries from 1997 we see what happened from her point of view.

The supporting characters are also hard to gauge - they seem to have their own agendas and their view of the past is again different from Frankie's.

I did find I grew a bit tired of Frankie's back and forth after a bit as I found it somewhat repetitive - perhaps this could have been shortened up a bit. Douglas drops hints as the book progresses that had me guessing at what some of that dark past might be. I was partially right, but not completely. Douglas drops a nice little twist in at the end. Local Girl Missing is perfect reading for the beach bag. ( )

The ruin of an old Victorian pier holds a few secrets and it's also the place where Sophie, Frankie's best friend disappeared 17 years ago. Frankie unwillingly returns home from London to help Daniel finally find out what really did happen to his sister all those years ago. The story was implausible but I enjoyed it! I loved the cover, the style of writing and descriptions of a seaside town out of season. A good bit of escapism which kept my attention from start to finish. ( )

A darkly written thriller, with well drawn characters.
20 years ago, Sophie goes missing from Oldecliffe on Sea and later her body is recovered at Brean just up the coast.
Her best friend, Fran, returns to the seaside town to identify the body and to try and discover what happened and to get some answers.
With chapters written in the first person, alternating between Sophie and Fran's life, this story gripped me to the end.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Penguin / Michael Joseph via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review. ( )

Francesca Howe receives a phone call regarding her old childhood friend, Sophie Collier. Sophie went missing almost twenty years earlier in the seaside town where they both lived. Now, when a body turns up, it seems like it's time for Francesca to go back and try to find out what happened all those years ago.

This is a very good psychological thriller. Claire Douglas ramps up the tension and makes it all feel rather claustrophobic. The story moves at a fast pace and alternates between Francesca in the present and Sophie in 1997 and this works well as a device to reveal the story and the twist towards the end.

I thought this was a great read and one I raced through. ( )