The Missing by Daisy Pearce
Genre: Domestic thriller, Suspense
Read: 3rd January 2021
Published: 9th June 2020
★ 1 star
DESCRIPTION:
A missing girl. A loving mother who never gave up. A betrayed wife who doesn’t know who to trust.
Teenager Edie Hudson was nobody’s little darling, which made vanishing all too easy. Two decades later, she’s been forgotten by everyone except her mother, Samantha.
And the person who knows what happened to her.
Samantha has had a long time to remember, and to regret. Having seen how little her daughter mattered to the community in the months following her disappearance, she wonders if Edie was lost before she was even gone. Or was it guilt, not indifference, that made the locals turn a blind eye? When she meets Frances, she at last starts to hope for answers.
Because Frances is obsessed with the mystery too, after finding a photo of her husband with the girl who disappeared.
What really happened all those years ago? And just how dangerous could it be to find out?
MY REVIEW:
A missing girl. A loving mother who never gave up. A betrayed wife who doesn’t know who to trust.
Fifteen year old Edie Hudson disappeared 18 years ago without a trace. She never made it to school one day and has never been seen or heard from since. Her mother Samantha still lives with grief on a daily basis of losing her only child and wondering what became of her.
Frances has been married to William Thorn for two years but as Frances approaches 33, she is aware of her biological clock ticking and yearns to fill their lives with children. The box room upstairs is where she envisions the cot, the toybox and her nursing her baby whilst the morning sun beams through the window. But alas, that room has become William's home office and where he stores his files and keeps his computer. Recently, Frances has become suspicious of William's behaviour. Money they have saved together for their "baby fund" has gone missing from their account and he appears to be more withdrawn. And then Frances discovers a USB stick taped to the back of his computer. On it are some very revealing photos of a very young woman, in her underwear and clutching an expensive purse William paid for. Is he having an affair?
Then his mother has a fall and he and Frances make the three hour drive to the Sussex Downs to be with her. But his mother's memory appears affected and she gets names and people muddled up. The doctors assure them this is normal after a fall resulting in a head injury and she should regain her normal memory soon. But she doesn't...instead she starts to make some wild noises that don't appear to make a great deal of sense. William's younger brother Alex brings in some old photographs to help kickstart her memory...
...and that's when Frances discovers a photo of a much younger William with the missing girl. Frances then becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to Edie Hudson as she and Samantha begin to search for answers.
What really happened 18 years ago? The answer is, I didn't much care by this point. Edie was a selfish horrible girl who I didn't much care for and really wasn't invested in finding out what happened to her. All her mother Samantha to do was drone on and on monologuing about life with and without Edie. Frances' story was far more engaging but the chapters were far too long, everything far too descriptive and far too wordy that I just gave up. I ended up skipping to the final chapters to find out what happened and honestly...while it was surprising, I still didn't much care. Edie was hateful. A mean girl who treated her mother like crap. There was something seriously wrong with that girl, a borderline personality disorder maybe.
Told from both Samantha and Frances' perspectives, I was not intrigued in the slightest, but rather I was bored. From start to...well, where I finished. I was disappointed as the premise sounded so promising but the delivery just failed.
I would like to thank #DaisyPearce, #NetGalley and #AmazonPublishingUK for an ARC of #TheMissing in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s 'Cujo' and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.
She began writing short stories as a teenager and after spells living in London and Brighton. She has also written articles about mental health online. In 2015, The Silence won a bursary with The Literary Consultancy, and later that year Daisy also won the Chindi Authors Competition with her short story ‘Worm Food’. Her second novel was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Award.
Daisy currently works in the library at the University of Sussex, where she shelves books and listens to podcasts on true crime and folklore.
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